Reinventing Peacehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace
Mon, 05 Dec 2016 17:49:52 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.3Garrison America and the Threat of Global Warhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/12/05/garrison-america-and-the-threat-of-global-war/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/12/05/garrison-america-and-the-threat-of-global-war/#respondMon, 05 Dec 2016 17:49:52 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3568Below are excerpts from Alex de Waal’s “Garrison America and the Threat of Global War,” published by The Boston Review on December 5, 2016. The text version is available on their website.

Donald Trump was elected as the mouthpiece for a populist insurgency that humbled the biggest political machine in the United States. But [...]]]>

Donald Trump was elected as the mouthpiece for a populist insurgency that humbled the biggest political machine in the United States. But he is also a plutocrat, a scion of the very system against which he mobilized so much anger. And his cabinet is oligarchy incorporated. What most distinguished Trump from Hillary Clinton in his public performance was his candor in admitting that the system is rotten and so is he. Trump was elected because he is deplorable, and proud of it.

However fascinating and repugnant is Trump as a political performance, his campaign is but a buoy bobbing up and down, revealing the existence of powerful national and global currents, not directing them. Those currents were caused by something else. This essay tries to identify and examine those underlying currents, which derive from the deregulation of the financial sector and liberal capitalism, from the rapaciousness of the national security establishment, and from the political logic that derives from their fusion.

My guide to understanding our current global and political crisis is Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation. Published in 1944 amid the ruins of nineteenth-century liberal civilization, Polanyi’s account is prescient of the dangers of the second global liberal order and its eventual unraveling. He describes how the unprecedented century of peace among the Great Powers (1815–1914) culminated in a world dominated by institutions dedicated to managing the global market. To Polanyi, the central intellectual error of nineteenth-century political economists was to treat land, labor, and money as actual commodities, rather than “fictitious commodities” governed by human values. Against the logic of the market, he said, they cannot be priced according to supply and demand, and any attempt to do so would ultimately render human society incoherent—“a wilderness.” This, he argued, duly transpired in the early twentieth century’s era of liberal globalization, followed by ostensibly protective measures against the societal devastation—war among empires, revolution and fascism—which of course caused even greater annihilation. In increasingly desperate attempts to preserve the market-based global order—especially the gold standard—entire societies were sacrificed. It was a fruitless sacrifice, because the price ultimately paid was totalitarianism, the bloodletting of World War II, and the Holocaust.

Nonetheless the global order of the last seventy years has been increasingly organized around the market principle, which started as a chastened junior partner to the multilateral system designed in Bretton Woods but ended up running the show with hubris reminiscent of Victorian laissez-faire imperialism. Only in the last few years have economists woken up to the extremes of inequality engendered by unfettered global markets. Meanwhile Brexit and the Trump vote have shown us the political significance of the societal wastelands that follow in their wake.

[***]

So now—a winning minority of the electorate having lodged its protest and voted for its own gravedigger—the logic of today’s political economy is laid bare. What then can we take from The Great Transformation to deeper our understanding of our predicament? Polanyi’s central conclusion is that unregulated capitalism promised a “stark Utopia” of great wealth but destroyed the social and material basis of a humane society. Just over a hundred years ago, nineteenth-century Western liberal civilization reached its apogee, which was also the moment at which it could no longer contain the forces of disorder that it had unleashed. The massive destruction of the world wars, the communist revolution, fascist imperialism, and the Great Depression followed. Capitalism was reprieved by the political dispensation that followed World War II. John Maynard Keynes provided the intellectual capital for managing the market, and the victors of the war recognized that full employment, social welfare, and a good measure of equality were necessary to save civilization. But capitalism’s dangerous tendencies remained and, once freed from the challenge of socialism, its utopian dogma was again ascendant. The inevitable crisis is now here.

Financially, renewed crisis has crept up on us since the false hopes following the 2008 bailout. Interest rates in the world’s biggest economies are now effectively zero, and in some cases negative. Central banks will borrow money from creditors, promising that they will return almost all of it. Investors cannot bank on the future: there is an oversupply of financial derivatives relative to the actual goods and services that make up a real economy. The Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and the Financial Times worry that the world’s central bankers have run out of instruments to fix global financial crises.

The political crisis is here too, its self-anointed saviors donning the uniform of plutocratic populism. It is a revolt not only against the wastelands created by neoliberal economic orthodoxies, but also against the way in which monetized machine politics reduces political identities to commodities. The reactionary insurgency is driven by a collapse of confidence in governing elites: the promises made by mainstream politicians now trade at such a discount they are worthless. The populists’ immediate and opportunistic targets of scapegoating are immigrants, minorities, and free-trade agreements. The insurgents respect men in uniform, their weapons, and solutions imposed by force of arms. Let us call this Garrison America.

[***]

At times like this, we need farsighted leaders with a sense of the dangers that await. Britain was ill provided. Brexit, until last month the biggest political tremor in the crumbling of the global-multilateral order, was the product of the reckless, small-minded ambitions of a coterie of old school chums who played with matches and burned the house down. If illustration were needed of the catastrophic smugness of an elite, look no further than Boris Johnson, for whom the fate of the country was of no greater import than a nice turn of phrase in a newspaper column. After Brexit, with the lies of its proponents exposed and Remainers’ predictions of calamity coming true one by one, the British government is wholly preoccupied with the stupendous mountain of legal paperwork necessary for the world’s most complicated divorce. It is uncertain what is more antithetical to farsighted leadership: the self-inflicted paralysis of London, or the freedom of action enjoyed by the incoming Republican president with a Republican legislature in Washington, D.C.

Trump’s promises have been so vague that it will be hard for him to disappoint. Nonetheless, many of his supporters will wake up to the fact that they have been duped, or realize the futility of voting for a wrecker out of a sense of alienated desperation. The progressives’ silver lining to the 2016 election is that, had Clinton won, the Trump constituency would have been back in four years’ time, probably with a more ruthless and ideological candidate. Better for plutocratic populism to fail early. But the damage inflicted in the interim could be terrible—even irredeemable if it were to include swinging a wrecking ball at the Paris Climate Agreement out of simple ignorant malice.

Polanyi recounts how economic and financial crisis led to global calamity. Something similar could happen today. In fact we are already in a steady unpicking of the liberal peace that glowed at the turn of the millennium. Since approximately 2008, the historic decline in the number and lethality of wars appears to have been reversed. Today’s wars are not like World War I, with formal declarations of war, clear war zones, rules of engagement, and definite endings. But they are wars nonetheless.

What does a world in global, generalized war look like? We have an unwinnable “war on terror” that is metastasizing with every escalation, and which has blurred the boundaries between war and everything else. We have deep states—built on a new oligarchy of generals, spies, and private-sector suppliers—that are strangling liberalism. We have emboldened middle powers (such as Saudi Arabia) and revanchist powers (such as Russia) rearming and taking unilateral military action across borders (Ukraine and Syria). We have massive profiteering from conflicts by the arms industry, as well as through the corruption and organized crime that follow in their wake (Afghanistan). We have impoverishment and starvation through economic warfare, the worst case being Yemen. We have “peacekeeping” forces fighting wars (Somalia). We have regional rivals threatening one another, some with nuclear weapons (India and Pakistan) and others with possibilities of acquiring them (Saudi Arabia and Iran).

Above all, today’s generalized war is a conflict of destabilization, with big powers intervening in the domestic politics of others, buying influence in their security establishments, bribing their way to big commercial contracts and thereby corroding respect for government, and manipulating public opinion through the media. Washington, D.C., and Moscow each does this in its own way. Put the pieces together and a global political market of rival plutocracies comes into view. Add virulent reactionary populism to the mix and it resembles a war on democracy.

What more might we see? Economic liberalism is a creed of optimism and abundance; reactionary protectionism feeds on pessimistic scarcity. If we see punitive trade wars and national leaders taking preemptive action to secure strategic resources within the walls of their garrison states, then old-fashioned territorial disputes along with accelerated state-commercial grabbing of land and minerals are in prospect. We could see mobilization against immigrants and minorities as a way of enflaming and rewarding a constituency that can police borders, enforce the new political rightness, and even become electoral vigilantes.

Liberal multilateralism is a system of seeking common wins through peaceful negotiation; case-by-case power dealing is a zero-sum calculus. We may see regional arms races, nuclear proliferation, and opportunistic power coalitions to exploit the weak. In such a global political marketplace, we would see middle-ranking and junior states rewarded for the toughness of their bargaining, and foreign policy and security strategy delegated to the CEOs of oil companies, defense contractors, bankers, and real estate magnates.

The United Nations system appeals to leaders to live up to the highest standards. The fact that they so often conceal their transgressions is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. A cabal of plutocratic populists would revel in the opposite: applauding one another’s readiness to tear up cosmopolitan liberalism and pursue a latter-day mercantilist naked self-interest. Garrison America could opportunistically collude with similarly constituted political-military business regimes in Russia, China, Turkey, and elsewhere for a new realpolitik global concert, redolent of the early nineteenth-century era of the Congress of Vienna, bringing a façade of stability for as long as they collude—and war when they fall out.

And there is a danger that, in response to a terrorist outrage or an international political crisis, President Trump will do something stupid, just as Europe’s leaders so unthinkingly strolled into World War I. The multilateral security system is in poor health and may not be able to cope.

Underpinning this is a simple truth: the plutocratic populist order is a future that does not work. If illustration were needed of the logic of hiding under the blanket rather than facing difficult realities, look no further than Trump’s readiness to deny climate change.

We have been here before, more or less, and from history we can gather important lessons about what we must do now. The importance of defending civility with democratic deliberation, respecting human rights and values, and maintaining a commitment to public goods and the global commons—including the future of the planet—remain evergreen. We need to find our way to a new 1945—and the global political settlement for a tamed and humane capitalism—without having to suffer the catastrophic traumas of trying everything else first.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/12/05/garrison-america-and-the-threat-of-global-war/feed/0Interview with Fred Bauma and Sylvain Salusekehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/12/01/interview-with-fred-bauma-and-sylvain-saluseke/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/12/01/interview-with-fred-bauma-and-sylvain-saluseke/#respondThu, 01 Dec 2016 15:10:40 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3564This week, I interviewed Fred Bauma and Sylvain Saluseke, democracy activists from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Both were arrested by Congolese security forces on March 18, 2015. Sylvain was held over a month and Fred remained in prison until August 2016 (more on this here, here, here,here and here). In this interview, [...]]]>This week, I interviewed Fred Bauma and Sylvain Saluseke, democracy activists from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Both were arrested by Congolese security forces on March 18, 2015. Sylvain was held over a month and Fred remained in prison until August 2016 (more on this here, here, here,here and here). In this interview, they address their strategy for democratization and the impending crisis as Congo reaches the end of its President’s term without having held an election.

BC:

I wanted to start by asking how you define the problem of Congo today?

FB:

It is not an easy question! I don’t know if there is a single problem or if it is so many problems. But I will describe the problem as LUCHA[Lutte pour le Changement] sees it.

Congo, as we know, is potentially a very rich country, in terms of mineral, agricultural and even ecological potential, but on one side we have so much wealth potential and on the other side, we have very poor population. One of the poorest in Africa and the world. In the beginning, people thought that the problem was about education. The level of education when the Belgian colonist left and there were at least two or three people who had graduated from college and there really wasn’t any leader who was prepared to lead the country. That may have been the problem at the beginning in 1960, but now we are over 50 year after independence. We have universities, we have people who have graduated, and the problems remain.

For me, the major problem in Congo is about the Congolese people: the typical Congolese and the way they think about the relationship between the population and the rulers. The people don’t feel themselves as watchmen for the rulers. They feel as if they are ready to have everything from the rulers and not hold them accountable. That is the major problem that led us to have a dictator for over 30 years. People were just accepting what he was doing, without having a consciousness that they have the power to change the things.

The other problem is leadership. On one side, we have people who don’t understand their own power and the way that they can influence their leadership and hold their leaders accountable. On the other hand, we have leadership that has no vision. They are involved in corruption and led by their personal interests instead of the community or national interest. This weakened population tends to let those guys continue to destroy the country without asking anything and the outcome of this situation is of course poverty and collapse of the country that we have, just because we cannot hold each other accountable.

BC:

Sylvain, is that how you would identify the problem as well?

SS:

Yeah, there is definitely a big portion to it to do with the lack of understanding of what accountability means and the belief—it’s the other side of that coin -– the wrong belief that I think that Mobutu was really preaching, to say, ‘le chef est chef.’ The population has been brought to the point of thinking that once you are a ruler or once you occupy a particular position and are seen as above the population, it’s a green light to do anything and everything that you want.

I was reading a book by one professor, George Ayittey, he was talking about the difference between socialism and the social fabric of Africa—the difference. As example, people tend to think that Africans in general are socialist or communist, he says no, its not like that. As example, he said, if you go back in African tradition when there was a ruler who was badly ruling his populations, because there was no voting system, per se, people exercised their rights by leaving that kingdom and going to live somewhere else. Even then, there was accountability—the system said if you cannot manage it properly, people will decide to just leave and go to live somewhere else. By wrongly interpreting that those who are ruling us have the freedom to do anything, l’homme Congolais (the Congolese man/person) today has reached a point where — is linked to an African aspect — of letting the rulers free. It’s like giving them a free pass. Back to the question of accountability, they hold the power in this new way of thinking and living, rather than the rulers have it.

BC:

When you come to the US, if you ask, what is the problem with Congo? You would hear policy people taking a very different approach. They would say it’s all the armed groups, it’s the lack of rule of law (which obviously links to accountability, but not exactly the way you’re describing it), but they would describe the crisis, and its always a crisis, that Congo is in now. And that’s the problem. It’s very interesting to hear you speak of the problem as a relationship and set of expectations between those who govern and those who are ruled, the populace. I wonder if in your opinion, if that problem becomes more acute when there is the pretense of democracy, even if its not working, that the set of expectations for what democracy will be is out of sync with how power actually functions.

FB:

Coming back to what he was saying, people describe the actual situation of Congo as the poverty, war, rule of law, but it is just a consequence or outcome of that relationship. I think that democracy, what people propose by democracy, is to bring a different system in which people have the power to control the rulers, maybe directly or through parliament. The idea of democracy is good, but in practice democracy may work only if the people who need to, who are the base of that democracy, are aware of their role. Otherwise you will have elections, but what has happened in Congo, for example, in past elections is that people are very poor and the rulers keep them in that poverty. For example, if I am a member of Parliament, I feel comfortable to go into a village and give medical supplies and things like that instead of trying to find a real solution to help the community respond to its health problems.

In that democracy, people are being kept in poverty so that they depend financially and materially on their ruler. So when it comes to elections, its just people present themselves like a family member or someone who gives food in order to be elected. We tend to have a democratic system, but it is still, ‘you give me your vote and I give you some money’, I buy your vote. Those people don’t sell an idea or a project, they use that poverty to buy the vote of people. That is not democracy in my opinion. But the idea of democracy is good. What we are working on is, as I said at the beginning, to change the relationship between people and power, and to help them understand that in an election and every day in life they need to understand their role in order to maintain that democracy. That is the only way that democracy can help to build stronger institutions and respond to all those crises that you described.

BC:

LUCHA and some of the other organizations you’ve been involved with are youth-based, but not as youth would be described in the US, as like 18 – 25, maybe young adult, but it includes – even Sylvain! — a broader generation. Its really an upcoming generation and larger embrace, I’m curious if the way that you speak about democracy and how you want to organize, which operates along a much longer timeline for change, does that appeal to younger people? Is it resonating?

SS:

So you said ‘even Sylvain,’ I am not 80 years old, I just want to put that out there!

I think what you mean to say is that if we take the DRC today, the average age today is 18 years old, I’m double that age today. The question is: Am I youth in my own country today? That question is important in two ways. One is that people of my generation, of my age whom today have done well, that could be probably leading some companies or playing a key role in corporations around Congo, and some who have not had those opportunities to reach that level, both of us are growing up in that space where we are transitioning from the Mobutus to the Kabilas. Now you also get the younger ones, who all they’ve known about Mobutu is what they’ve read or heard. All they’ve known their life is the Kabilas.

There are now these two generations, both of us we’ve lived basically the same thing and we’re both looking at what is going to happen in the future for both of us. Now when you look at the age of the rulers, this is true not only in Congo but across Africa, it’s very seldom that you find people of my age in high position of power in government unless if you’re the son of a president or your uncle is a minister. People of our generations we feel very much that we’re not in a position to influence power. We’re all part of this same millennial, as you say—we all tweet and we all use Facebook.

Fred, maybe you can respond to that question about how we view democracy, if we see it together?

BC:

Its interesting how expectations have changed from people who have grown up with Mobutu as the norm and after, and then people like you who have lived some part of your life in each of these, I want something different from this.

FB:

The interesting thing is if people of our generation understand democracy as we explain it. I think the big challenge is to educate people. Young people of our generation, most of us, for example, me, and people like me, the only thing we lived through was the end of Mobutu and the rise of Kabila and all the hope that came with what he called the guerre de liberation [war of liberation], and the way Joseph Kabila turned to dictatorship and in the beginning there was hope. Many of us had no experience of dictatorship under Mobutu, but we lived through the consequences by the end of Mobutu, in 1996 and after. We, me and my family, lived through war, displacement, leaving our home and things like that. We knew about that dream of freedom, of democracy by reading and studying in the school and those great idea that democracy is the power of the people by the people and blab blah, blah.

It is in living and seeing how the regime has transformed itself from hope of democracy to something really contrary that we see that maybe democracy is not just to call a regime a democratic regime and call an election. Maybe we have something to do in order to really bring about this thing called democracy. That is the beginning of what are going. Young people believe in democracy and understand the idea of democracy at a very global level. But the challenge we have actually and what we are working on is to bring them to understand their role in that democratic system. To let them take the next step. Yes, democracy is having institutions that control each other, but in those institutions there must also be those people who hold them all accountable.

One of the academic—I’m not a specialist—but in the academy, they draw presidents with limited power, a parliament with limited power, a court that can do…all the checks and balances. But in a system like DRC, the problem is systemic. The government that should control the parliament, is as corrupted as the parliament, and the courts that control both are also corrupted. We have, for example, a constitution that says that the president cannot run for another term, and we have a constitutional court in the case that he may violate the constitution, may judge him. But we have a system in which those checks and balances don’t function. The constitutional court which should control him is under his control. So he says, we need the constitutional court to take this decision, they take it; we need the parliament to do this…. There is theoretically a check and balance, but in reality there is no check and balance.

In that moment, the only institution–let me call it an institution– that can play the role of check and balance is the population. If the executive, the parliament and the judicial system fail, the only one who can bring them to respect what is written in the text is that last and biggest institution in a democratic system.

The challenge is to bring more and more people to understand that we have all those people in higher power, but we are the base of democracy and we have to play our role. Otherwise we will have institutions, but we will never have democracy.

SS:

Just adding on to that, that is the real challenge, as Fred says. How do we keep talking to all these young people despite their background and despite their aspirations to move to an understanding that they have to be part of the process. They shouldn’t just stay and watch things being done on their behalf. People do things because they are elected…They have to understand that actually they have a role to play, they have to be engaged, there is no other way we can express it better than that. Reaching out and telling them, you need to be engaged. We cannot talk about democracy without governance; you cannot talk about governance if there is no accountability; and you cannot be rooting for accountability if you don’t understand you own responsibilities.

For us, this comes down to very simple things, like, guys if you live in your house and outside your street, the drainage is blocked, what is forbidding you from getting two, three, four, five of you to unblock that drainage? Yes, we are looking up to the government to do something, but your responsibility goes beyond denouncing, you have to be action driven. That is how we try to frame democracy and participation together.

BC:

It’s a different mindset and a different way of thinking about one’s self.

I wanted to end the conversation with the two of you on what is going on politically now in Congo. There were supposed to be elections, for reasons of wanting to keep power but explained in terms of lack of time and lack of resources, elections did not take place. December 19th is a really critical moment. Can you explain what is happening and what you think will happen around the bend…if you can pull out your ability to see the future?

FB:

This is the question that everyone is asking. I would like to have the ability to see the future, but I cannot. But I think this is linked to the previous conversation that we had. Normally what should happen on December 19th is that the President would have to step down according to the constitution. One of the institutions that should make sure he leaves the office that day is that the constitutional court. We have a situation in which that constitutional court decided that he may stay in power as long as there is not a new president. That means he may stay in power until the time he wants…

BC:

…until he decides to call elections.

FB:

Until he decides to call elections…that is really incredible. But what will happen? What I’d like to see happen is that he himself says, ‘I’ve been in charge fifteen years, I’ve done my work, I have some results, I failed in some ways, my time is up—I have to go.’ And the constitution is clear. When the time is up, he has to go and let someone else continue. If there is no new president normally, it should be the president of the senate who takes his place. Because it is very simple: the president has to organize the election, and the electoral commission — normally an independent electoral commission — should call the elections ninety days before the end of his mandate and ten days after the election he should go out of office. The last day that should happen is December 19th.

He will not do that. It should be considered like an act of high treason, because he has a duty to organize the election. It is the basis of democracy to have elections at the end of his term. And he didn’t. In the case that we have high treason the president of the senate should take his place. We are in the same situation. So, we are asking him to leave and let the president of the senate take over.

He will not do it on purpose. He planned to stay in power and that is why he didn’t organize the election. What will happen is that people will organize themselves and go into the street to call him to step down. Of course, we know that he will respond with the military, sending tanks and soldiers into the road and maybe they will kill people as they did in September, as they did in January last year. Unfortunately, this is likely to happen in December.

I think this situation, this new crisis, another crisis after so many years may have so many consequences. I think that on December 19th many people will go in the street and we don’t know what will happen. It is the beginning of the collapse of the institutions. We have an economy, which is collapsing. We had a budget, a very small budget of 7 billion. I think it is now less than the budget of Harvard University.

Yes, in Congo its for 70 million people.
It was 7 billion two years ago, and now it is 4 billion. We came from seven to four. It wasn’t enough at seven, and now four…? The principle financial institutions are falling down. One bank is down and some microfinance, which holds the money for those people who really don’t have money, just enough money to live with, has also gone bankrupt. There are more and more demonstrations in military families, military wives and some demobilized military in their camp…

BC:
…because they’re not being paid anymore?

FB:
They’re not being paid anymore … and the public administration, as well, they are not being paid. All these kind of social pressure on the government may bring the entire system to collapse. This may not happen on December 19th, but it will surely happen in the weeks or months to come if nothing is done to address things right now. Unfortunately, this will affect millions of lives. They will still have something to do in order to avoid that, but people don’t take it seriously. One day people in the world will start saying ‘never again’ as they said in Rwanda or eastern Europe, but they have a choice to avoid it. We are going into a new crisis and there will be a crisis. Maybe Kabila will stay in power after December 19th, but he will not be able to rule the country.

SS:

I think Fred has said much of it around December. There are just too many expectations of what will happen and no one knows for sure. It is important to remind people that before only looking at the violence that might start happening in December, there is a need to return to what we said earlier. There was an agreement out of the fighting, out of Sun City where everyone agreed and said, ‘guys lets make this together. This is our constitution and let’s move forward.’ The first elections were mired in controversies, everyone said, ‘this is the first time, nothing is perfect the first time, lets move on.’ The second elections in 2011, which were clearly very flawed, and people said, ‘you know what? This is his last term. Lets just accept it and then we’ll move on.’ We shouldn’t underestimate peoples’ ability to understand and appreciate those aspects of things. The reasons why we allowed the previous election results to continue, it’s not because people were feeling powerless, it’s just that people thought we need to build on something.

Right now we’re putting the constitution in brackets, and start looking for ‘lets go out and talk so we can see how we go forward’, that famous word, ‘glissement.’ It’s setting a very bad precedent and no one is calling it that. This can be avoided. December 19th can be avoided. Let the President step down. Let the constitution continue, let the president of the senate take over and we’ll do elections and then we’ll continue.

FB:
We were discussing yesterday something that I think is important. The question comes every day that I am here: ‘What do you think will happen on December 19th.’ We see deep in this question, ‘do you think people will demonstrate on December 19th’ ? And if you go far, the question is, ‘do you think people will be killed on December 19th’? Yes, if there are demonstrations, people will be killed, because that is what the government will do. The question should be, what can we do to avoid killing on December 19th? Because if we wait to see what will happen on December 19th, then on December 20th we will be counting and condemning in all those statements of foreign affairs, saying: we cannot believe, we cannot accept, we are deeply concerned, and so on…We are deeply concerned and people are still dying. If people are deeply concerned they should act.

BC:

Thank you both for your time. Bon chance, mes amis! You’re doing very important work.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/12/01/interview-with-fred-bauma-and-sylvain-saluseke/feed/0Nigeria’s ‘Armsgate’ scandal: Why have a slice when you can take the cake?https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/29/nigerias-armsgate-scandal-why-have-a-slice-when-you-can-take-the-cake/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/29/nigerias-armsgate-scandal-why-have-a-slice-when-you-can-take-the-cake/#respondTue, 29 Nov 2016 14:12:21 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3562The ‘conventional’ understanding of corruption in arms procurement is that it takes the form of bribes or kickbacks. In return for being awarded an arms contract, often as a result of having selection criteria manipulated in its favour, the supplier company pays bribes to officials involved in the decision-making process. Payments typically are channeled through [...]]]>The ‘conventional’ understanding of corruption in arms procurement is that it takes the form of bribes or kickbacks. In return for being awarded an arms contract, often as a result of having selection criteria manipulated in its favour, the supplier company pays bribes to officials involved in the decision-making process. Payments typically are channeled through an in-country middleman or agent.

But why be satisfied with bribes or kickbacks equaling 10% of the value of a contract when you can take the whole lot? In countries where oversight of military funds is at its weakest, or indeed non-existent, top officials and military officers have essentially free reign over how money is spent. In such circumstances, there is no need to go through the complexities of an actual arms procurement process, squandering 90% of the money on paying for actual weapons systems. Instead, those in charge can simply misappropriate funds directly, possibly with the thin cover of a fake contract for non-existent equipment.

In Nigeria, this practice is called simply, “stealing”, and it appears to be a far more significant phenomenon than the pedestrian practice of bribery.

Such was the case with the ironically named ‘Armsgate’ scandal, which broke in 2015 and in which no arms were procured. The scandal, which is still unfolding, involves the alleged theft of at least $2.1 billion, and possibly as much as $15 billion, of extra-budgetary funds intended for arms to fight Boko Haram, between 2007 and 2015. This took place under the rule of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) government of Presidents Umaru Yar’Adua, who ruled from 2007 until his death in 2010, and Goodluck Jonathan, his Vice President, who took over upon Yar’Adua’s death, and subsequently won reelection in 2011.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Armsgate is that it came to light at all. Nigeria’s powerful military, which ruled the country for many years, had hitherto been effectively immune from investigation and prosecution for corruption. When I looked at the website of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) a few years ago, I found plenty of cases of prosecution of state Governors, ex-ministers, civil servants, business people, even police, for corruption, but none of military officers or Ministry of Defence officials. But President Muhammadu Buhari, elected in 2015 on an anti-corruption platform, appears to have broken with this pattern of impunity.

The background to Armsgate was the repeated failure of the Nigerian army in fighting the Boko Haram insurgency in the country’s north-east, with soldiers frequently running away rather than fighting. This allowed the armed group to take control of large swathes of territory. Troops and local commanders regularly complained that they were lacking even basic equipment, and were indeed often outgunned by Boko Haram, in spite of large amounts of money supposedly spent on arms procurement. After initial denials of a problem, senior military figures, some of them later implicated in the scandal, were forced to admit that the military was severely underequipped. National Security Advisor Colonel Sambo Dasuki himself admitted, “we bought equipment, but alas, it is still on the high seas”.

Investigations began shortly after President Buhari came to power in May 2015. On July 15, troops from the State Security Services raided Col. Dasuki’s house, finding among other things 12 ‘exotic cars’. Then on August 24, Buhari appointed a panel of enquiry into arms procurement under the former government.

The investigative panel produced its first interim report on November 17, 2015. The numbers contained in official public statements on the report are hard to interpret, but by any reading expose massive fraud in arms procurement. The report stated that, between 2007 and 2015, there had been ‘extra-budgetary interventions’ for arms procurement totaling 643.8 billion naira, and that the ‘foreign currency component’ was $2.2 billion. These appear to be two separate sums involved in the corruption scandal, as over the period in question, the Naira was never below 200 to the US dollar. Thus, the total value of these ‘extra-budgetary interventions’ would have amounted to somewhere between $4.5 billion and $7.2 billion, depending on the timing of the Naira transactions and the exchange rate at the time.[1]

However, very little actual arms procurement resulted. According to the report, “The committee also observed that of 513 contracts awarded at $8,356,525,184.32; N2,189,265,724,404.55 and €54,000.00; Fifty Three (53) were failed contracts amounting to $2,378,939,066.27 and N13,729,342,329.87 respectively.” This would amount to about $2.5 billion worth of ‘failed contracts’. The total value of contracts awarded is clearly far higher than the extra-budgetary interventions (at least $19 billion). [Presumably, these figures relates to all contracts from both budgetary and extra-budgetary sources, and including regular contracts for goods and services as well as for arms.]

At the center of the web of corruption is Colonel Sambo Dasuki, who was Jonathan’s National Security Advisor from March 2012 to March 2015, and who effectively controlled military procurement during his period in office. According to the report, Dasuki awarded ‘fictitious and phantom contracts’ worth $1.7 billion for the procurement of 4 Alpha jets, 12 helicopters, bombs and ammunition, which were never delivered. Most of the value of these contracts went to just two (unnamed) companies, despite their previous record of non-performance.

Moreover, the NSA directed the Central Bank of Nigeria to transfer $132 million and €9 million to the accounts of a Nigerian company, Societé d’Equipements Internationaux, without any contracts to back them up.

Dakusi was arrested two weeks later. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission also arrested several other officials implicated in the affair, including: Chief Raymond Dopkesi, Founder of Nigerian Media House Daar Communications; former governor of Sokoto State, Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa; Shuaibu Salisu, a former director of finance and administration in the office of the National Security Adviser; ex-finance minister Bashir Yuguda; and Saliu Atawodi, the former Chairman of the Presidential Implementation Committee on Marine Safety.

Since then, ongoing investigations by the EFCC have led to a steady stream of raids, arrests and charges, with dozens of military officers, federal government officials, state governors, senior political party apparatchiks, and businessmen implicated and billions of naira in money and property seized. Numerous military officers have been stripped of their commands. Along with Saduki, one of the highest profile people to be charged, in February 2016, is Air Chief Marshall Alex Badeh (rtd.), former Chief of Defence Staff, who was investigated regarding the award of $930.5 million worth of contracts under his leadership. Specific charges against him relate to the misappropriation of N4 billion; much of this appears to have come from funds intended for salaries, rather than procurement funds.

The full story is hard to follow, and I have not seen a comprehensive list anywhere, but in total I have counted 36 named military officers, as well as many more government and business figures. 241 organizations have been named by the EFCC as having received money from Dasuki. Thus far there have not been any reports of convictions in relation to Armsgate, although many trials have started. Dasuki’s trial has been repeatedly delayed, in some cases due to the failure of the Federal Government to produce him in court at planned trial dates.

The total amount stolen remains uncertain. In early May 2016, the EFCC reported that a previously-quoted figure of $2.1 billion related to just one transaction, and that in fact $15 billion had disappeared. If correct, this would be almost as much as the total official Defence budgets between 2007 and 2015. It was also said to equal half Nigeria’s foreign currency reserves. However, no further details of this figure have been produced.

The mechanisms of corruption appear to have depended on a complete absence of oversight of funds within the military apparatus. According to one observer, the rot truly began when Dakusi’s predecessor as NSA, General Andrew Awoye Azazi (retired, now deceased), appointed by Jonathan in October 2010. Azazi started to usurp the MOD’s job of conducting procurement, apparently with Jonathan’s approval—although, previously the MOD itself was hardly a model of probity. The ready justification of fighting Boko Haram allowed the government to effectively write blank checks for funds, supposedly for arms purchases, which could then be diverted into private bank accounts. Under the auspices of Saduki as NSA, contracts could be signed and funds allocated without any of the annoying details of tenders, competitions, proper accounting, or indeed any actual acquisitions to show for the contracts. In some cases, as noted above, funds flowed without even the formality of a contract. The financial rewards could therefore be freely shared out between Dakusi and other officers and officials approving the fake deals, and heads of real or paper companies to whom contracts were awarded. It appears that the Central Bank of Nigeria collaborated in the plunder, approving large transfers of funds to individuals and companies on the say-so of Saduki or other individual senior officials.

The lack of proper oversight mechanisms or procurement procedures for the military was the key factor in enabling this scale of corruption. Even before the transfer of responsibility for procurement to the NSA, defence procurement in Nigeria was severely lacking in accountability, and effectively exempted from the Public Procurement Act of 2007 that was supposed to regulate government procurement more rigorously and reduce corruption. Equally damaging was the ease with which the President was able to approve such large extra-budgetary military spending, without Parliament even being informed, let alone having any say or exercising any oversight.

The traditional immunity of the national security apparatus from scrutiny, and its impunity with regard to corruption and human rights abuses, was a key enabler of Armsgate. It is true that public procurement in general in Nigeria is riddled with corruption, but it is hard to imagine other areas of spending being so completely removed from any sort of process or oversight, or for such blatant stealing of funds to occur on such a large scale.

Behind all this is the sacred veil of National Security, which affords the military their exceptional status and exemption from normal procedures, erecting big ‘keep out’ signs for civilian agencies that might seek to scrutinize them. This argument was even more effective when Nigeria faced the devastating impact of Boko Haram’s brutal insurgency. No questions would be asked about money devoted to fighting terrorism. That this money never reached the front-line troops, thus greatly hampering the fight against Boko Haram and enabling their expansion, only perpetuated the cycle. As the threat continued to grow, and the spigot of cash flowing into the bank accounts of the elite remained open.

[1] The value of the Naira fell over the course of the Yar’Adua and Jonathan administrations, from 125 to the US dollar in June 2007, reaching a low of 117 in March 2008, before rising steadily to 199 by the time Jonathan left office in May 2015. As the bulk of the transactions occurred towards the latter part of President Jonathan’s time in office, it is likely that the total dollar value of the extra-budgetary spending was towards the lower end of the given range.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/29/nigerias-armsgate-scandal-why-have-a-slice-when-you-can-take-the-cake/feed/0Special Treatment: UK Government support for the arms trade and industryhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/23/special-treatment-uk-government-support-for-the-arms-trade-and-industry/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/23/special-treatment-uk-government-support-for-the-arms-trade-and-industry/#respondWed, 23 Nov 2016 19:02:24 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3560We are pleased to draw to your attention a new report by Sam Perlo-Freeman, project manager for our program on the Global Arms Business and Corruption. The report, “Special Treatment: UK Government support for the arms trade and industry,” was authored by Perlo-Freeman while he was at SIPRI, who describes it thus:

The arms industry and market, in the UK as in most other significant western arms-producing countries, has a unique status. Although its production capabilities are privately owned, it has the national government as its primary customer. Unlike other industries, especially in the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ economies, it is the subject of active government industrial policy.

The question of subsidies to arms exports must therefore be seen in the context of this huge overall level of government support, protection, and direct and indirect subsidy that the arms industry as a whole receives in the UK and elsewhere; support that is far out of proportion to its economic significance.

This study begins by providing an overall quantitative picture of the UK arms industry, followed by a brief overview of previous studies that have looked at subsidies to arms exports. It assesses and estimates the level of direct support to arms exports, that is, the identifiable subsidies that relate specifically to exports, while also discussing the place of exports in the broader government support to the arms industry and, in particular, funding for military research and development (R&D), as well as the extent to which this can be considered to include a direct or indirect subsidy to arms exports. Conversely, the report also considers the question of whether arms exports may save the UK government money through lower unit costs for its own procurement.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/23/special-treatment-uk-government-support-for-the-arms-trade-and-industry/feed/0Policy Memo: The ‘Regional Protection Force’ for South Sudanhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/15/policy-memo-the-regional-protection-force-for-south-sudan/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/15/policy-memo-the-regional-protection-force-for-south-sudan/#respondTue, 15 Nov 2016 20:44:22 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3550On 11 November 2016, the World Peace Foundation held consultations in Addis Ababa with policymakers and experts on the proposed deployment of a ‘Regional Protection Force’ (RPF) for South Sudan. A policy memo summarizing those consultations is now available on the African Peace Missions website.

[...]]]>On 11 November 2016, the World Peace Foundation held consultations in Addis Ababa with policymakers and experts on the proposed deployment of a ‘Regional Protection Force’ (RPF) for South Sudan. A policy memo summarizing those consultations is now available on the African Peace Missions website.

The African Union, IGAD and their international partners need a political strategy for South Sudan. Several lessons can be learned from the experience of the last two years. In particular, two preconditions need to be met if the deployment of the RPF is to be meaningful.

The unavoidable political interests of the neighboring states in the internal politics of South Sudan should be recognized and accommodated. Resolving major conflicts of interests among those states, notably between Sudan and Uganda, is a priority, because without any such resolution, there can be no internal political agreement in South Sudan.

Stability is the precondition for everything else, including even the most modest transformative agenda. The first step in any political or security process should be establishing sufficient stability for South Sudanese to engage in a political forum that can deliberate upon the future of their country. This should not be confused with the illusory stability of the status quo in Juba.

If the RPF were to be deployed without these two preconditions being met, it would risk being at best irrelevant and at worst a liability for its sponsors and a contributor to the further political degeneration in South Sudan. There are numerous risks of negative unintended consequences following a premature or politically disengaged deployment. Among them are the danger that it would be co-opted by the GoRSS in a strategy of consolidating an unsustainable status quo; that it would become party to a proxy conflict between neighboring states or caught in the middle of such a conflict; that it would raise false expectations among the South Sudanese populace that it was there to protect them, leading to disillusion, resentment and loss of legitimacy when it disappointed; and that the operational presence of the RPF would become the main preoccupation of the international community, to the exclusion of the political resolution of the conflict itself.

While there are genuine points of disagreement between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, the centrality of ‘security’ is not one of them. I wish this were not the case.

Both candidates seem to agree that security ought to be the basis of foreign (or even domestic) policy decision-making. They differ, [...]]]>

Security: the unmentionable debate

While there are genuine points of disagreement between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, the centrality of ‘security’ is not one of them. I wish this were not the case.

Both candidates seem to agree that security ought to be the basis of foreign (or even domestic) policy decision-making. They differ, of course, on what exact measures would make America ‘secure’ – but their debates have centred around the degree of threat from specific quarters (immigrants, refugees, trade, etc.) rather than the overarching importance of security.

Security refers to the broader practice and narratives around real or perceived threats: how are certain issues characterized as threats to citizens’, national or global security? What kind of responses become permissible because of such characterization? ‘Security-talk’ makes foreign policy appear apolitical; useful only if it protects American citizens from existential threats. The language of security amplifies all threats so that they appear existential and justifies militarized, repressive state policy. ‘Fear and prejudice are conscripted to the service of state and local projects’ (Goldstein 2016).

Consider the ‘dangers’ of undocumented migration, for instance, a subject on which Donald Trump has had much to say, and a topic which straddles both domestic and foreign policy. The rhetoric of national security has long been used to mask virulent, racialized immigration laws, from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to the security measures put in place along the US-Mexico border after the attacks on September 11, 2001. More recently, national security been used to justify US funding for Mexico’s southern-plan, which aims to militarize and better police Mexico’s southern border, stopping Central American migrants from traveling through Mexico to the USA. These measures are underpinned by the alleged criminality of all undocumented migrants (Chacón 2006) which in turn poses a threat to citizens and the nation. Trump is not alone: Clinton too, supports strong border policing, despite evidence that more policing has little effect on the volume of migration, and instead results in increased migrant deaths, as they are forced to travel along more dangerous routes (De León 2015).

The point is this: there may be good reasons to have restrictive immigration policies (although I cannot think of any) – but the unquestioning use of the security framework has justified particular forms of repressive anti-migrant action. By the same token, national security has been used to justify targeted drone strikes, support Saudi airstrikes (which may amount to war-crimes) in Yemen, and erode civil liberties, without questioning the causal link between these actions and citizens’ well-being. Clinton has even suggested that trade treaties like NAFTA should only be signed if they further American national security.

It is unlikely, of course, that foreign policy can ever be completely divorced from security. That said, it also seems clear that security does not need to be the only determinant of foreign policy. What would even a partially de-securitized foreign policy look like? That is the presidential debate that I would have liked to see.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/08/the-foreign-policy-debate-id-like-to-see-4/feed/0The foreign policy debate I’d like to seehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/07/the-foreign-policy-debate-id-like-to-see-3/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/07/the-foreign-policy-debate-id-like-to-see-3/#respondMon, 07 Nov 2016 13:15:39 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3525One of the unacknowledged triumphs of the thirty years prior to the election of President Obama, was the conquest of great famines. A scourge that had killed an average of ten million people every decade, over the previous century, now caused the deaths of a small fraction of that number.

The reasons why famines have declined are numerous and complex. But one factor is directly under the control of the U.S. government: political conditionalities imposed on the delivery of humanitarian aid. In late 1990s and early 2000s, there were several occasions on which the U.S. set aside its political opposition to a foreign government and decided to provide famine relief, regardless. One case was North Korea in 1996, when the Administration could have decided simply, and correctly, that the famine afflicting that country was entirely the doing of the regime in power. Some in Washington DC made that case, and further argued that providing aid would prolong a doomed regime in power. In Darfur, Sudan, in 2003, the Bush Administration similarly decided to authorize aid, despite the fact that the Sudanese government hadn’t asked for it and despite real fears that it would abuse and manipulate the assistance.

In both cases these aid efforts save hundreds of thousands of lives, and gained the U.S. immeasurable credence and goodwill.

Under the Obama Administration, we have seen the humanitarian imperative compromised by counter-terror laws and the politics of alliances. In Somalia and Syria, aid agencies were hampered by the PATRIOT Act from operating in areas in which they might be deemed to be providing assistance, material or symbolic, to groups labeled as terrorists. Preventable humanitarian disasters followed. In Yemen, the U.S. has been party to economic warfare conducted by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, causing famine conditions. In each of these cases, U.S. counter-humanitarianism cost lives, to no political benefit.

I would like to see this issue debated. What steps can be taken to put the global emergency response system on a firmer footing? Should the humanitarian imperative override the PATRIOT Act, and if so, how?

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/07/the-foreign-policy-debate-id-like-to-see-3/feed/0The foreign policy debate I’d like to seehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/04/the-foreign-policy-debate-id-like-to-see-2/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/04/the-foreign-policy-debate-id-like-to-see-2/#respondFri, 04 Nov 2016 18:29:16 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3546The US is the world’s number one international seller of arms. This is true whichever way you slice the data: using SIPRI’s measure of the volume of major conventional arms transfers, and even more so using the Congressional Research Service estimates of the financial value of orders.

The US distributes its arms widely, selling major [...]]]>

The US is the world’s number one international seller of arms. This is true whichever way you slice the data: using SIPRI’s measure of the volume of major conventional arms transfers, and even more so using the Congressional Research Service estimates of the financial value of orders.

The US distributes its arms widely, selling major conventional weapons to 96 countries between 2011-2015, according to SIPRI. But the great majority of US arms went to the Middle East (41%) or Asia and the Pacific (40%).

Arms sales to the Middle East in particular raise a lot of questions about US foreign policy priorities. The number one recipient of US arms for the period was Saudi Arabia, receiving 9.7% of US arms. With $115 billion worth of arms sales to Saudi agreed under the Obama administration, many more deliveries are still forthcoming.

Saudi Arabia is hardly a model of democracy and human rights. An absolute monarchy that brooks no dissent, that carries out public beheadings, where women do not have status as legally responsible individuals but are placed under male ‘guardianship’, and where a blogger was recently sentenced to 2000 lashes for being an atheist.

Moreover, Saudi Arabia is currently leading a brutal campaign of air strikes in Yemen, in support of one side in the country’s civil war, which has so far claimed over 10,000 lives. A third of the Saudi-led coalition’s air strikes have hit civilian targets such as schools, hospitals, markets, and funeral gatherings. Moreover, a Saudi-led naval blockade has created a humanitarian emergency in Yemen, which is now on the brink of famine.

The planes, bombs, missiles and other equipment with which Saudi Arabia prosecutes this campaign are from the US and its loyal lieutenant, the UK. The US has, until recently, supported the Saudi campaign, like Saudi Arabia fearing that the Houthi rebels on the other side are a proxy for Iran. Now, following the most recent Saudi atrocity, killing 140 people at a funeral, the US has called for an end to the bombing. But they are not ending the supply of bombs.

Saudi Arabia is vastly oversupplied with weaponry, more than they can actually use, and spends over 13% of its GDP on the military. They face no serious conventional military threat; notwithstanding their paranoia about Iran, whose military forces are mostly using clapped-out Cold War relics.

What about the US’s second biggest client during 2011-15? The United Arab Emirates, another Gulf dictatorship), and another participant in the coalition bombing Yemen.

Rather further down the list, in 22nd position, is Israel. While its not top of the list, it occupies a unique place in US foreign policy and arm supplies: it gets American weaponry for free.

Under the Premiership of Binyamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, Israel’s occupation (a word you won’t hear breathed by either Presidential candidate) of the Palestinian territories has continued to deepen, expand, and show every sign of becoming permanent. Obama’s efforts to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and his calls for Israel to stop building Israeli settlements, have been snubbed by Netanyahu. The two-state solution, the keystone of US foreign policy for the Middle East for over 20 years, has been effectively killed off by Israeli actions. Meanwhile, in an unprecedented action for a foreign leader, Bibi addressed both houses of Congress as part of his strenuous efforts to sabotage President Obama’s greatest foreign policy achievement, the Iran nuclear deal.

Bibi’s punishment for his systematic undermining of US foreign policy goals? A stern increase in military aid, with a new deal for $38 billion worth of US aid over the next decade signed in September. Bibi showed his gratitude to Obama within a couple of weeks by announcing a major new settlement which would virtually cut the West Bank in two, rendering the notion of a future Palestinian state on the tattered remains of the West Bank even more laughable. The Administration’s condemnation of the announcement rang rather hollow in the light of the aid deal.

The US arms Israel are justified as ensuring that it maintains its ‘qualitative military edge’ over its Arab neighbors. But most of these neighbors spend far less on their militaries than Israel, and are way behind in terms of both technology and military organization and readiness. The only country in the region that outspends Israel is – Saudi Arabia! So Israel needs all this US military aid to defend itself from the arms the US and its UK ally sell to Saudi Arabia.[1] Meanwhile, the Palestinian people regularly feel the sharp end of America’s largesse, during Israel’s periodic flattening of Gaza and the unrelenting cruelty of the occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza.

A meaningful debate would ask what the US is actually trying to achieve with arms sales to the Middle East? What are the strategic and human consequences of these sales? Is propping up the corrupt, Wahabist al-Saud regime either desirable or a good long-term strategic bet? And a proper debate would start to question the US’s knee-jerk support for Israel, regardless of the abuses they commit or how they undermine US policy. Is $38 billion worth of arms for Israel really a good use of taxpayers’ money, and is it really contributing to a just peace in the Middle East?

Notes:

[1] Aside from the fact that the ability of Saudi Arabia to effectively use all its military equipment in a conflict with a serious military opponent is highly questionable, that Saudi Arabia and Israel are currently tacit allies against Iran, and that the Saudis in any case have zero intention of intervening militarily on behalf of the Palestinians.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/04/the-foreign-policy-debate-id-like-to-see-2/feed/0The foreign policy debate I’d like to seehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/03/ian-what-foreign-policy-debate-id-like-to-see/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/03/ian-what-foreign-policy-debate-id-like-to-see/#respondThu, 03 Nov 2016 12:58:28 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3520The existing global institutional architecture is rooted in a distinctly American vision of world order that dates back to World War II. The United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank and General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs were at the heart of that order, complemented by NATO and regional organizations like the European Community and Organization of American States. With dramatic changes in the global power structure in recent decades, the world needs a debate about the future of the institutional architecture.

Today, all eyes are on the future of the European Union post-Brexit. At the global level, governance reform in the World Bank and IMF has not stopped China from establishing the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Nor has it stopped BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) from creating the New Development Bank.

As for the UN Security Council, not even the five permanent members deny that the composition and structure are out of date. Yet efforts at reform bump up against their veto power and the difficulty of getting two-thirds of the rest of the UN, including aspirants to permanent membership, to go along with whatever is proposed.

Meanwhile, informal groupings of states, like the G-7, G-8 and G-20 are struggling for relevance. And it is increasingly apparent that state-based organizations are not capable of dealing effectively with transnational threats like violent extremism, cyber attacks, forced displacement and infectious disease.

So the US needs a debate on reform of the existing architecture, what strategy to pursue to bring about that reform, and what role the US should play. The debate should take place now, before the US finds itself in a purely reactive mode, responding to initiatives taken by emerging powers and others who are increasingly able to shape the global agenda.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/03/ian-what-foreign-policy-debate-id-like-to-see/feed/0The foreign policy debate I’d like to seehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/02/the-foreign-policy-debate-id-like-to-see/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/02/the-foreign-policy-debate-id-like-to-see/#commentsWed, 02 Nov 2016 13:50:40 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3518The atrocities prevention and response policy agenda emerged in late-1990s in what now appears as a fleeting moment of liberal peace: a rising international agenda of mediation, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and a leading role for multilateral and international organizations. These approaches are now clamoring for space as other agendas have crowded out these responses to the world’s most pressing crises.

Born in that moment, was a belief that civilian protection is a legitimate strategic concern for states and international organizations. In the U.S., multiple endeavors were undertaken to strengthen the government’s normative and practical capacity to prevent and respond to exceptionally acute threats of widespread killing of civilians. Notable among these efforts was the 2008 Report of the Genocide Prevention Task Force, the establishment of the Atrocities Prevention Board (APB), an interagency policy committee, the inauguration of a National Intelligence Estimate on the global risk of mass atrocities and genocide, new training for both diplomats and military personnel, and so forth. On May 18, 2016, President Obama took a step to further institutionalize anti-atrocity policies by issuing an executive order, “A Comprehensive Approach to Atrocity Prevention and Response,” which notes that: “…engagement on mass atrocities and genocide too often arrives too late, when opportunities for prevention or low-cost, low-risk action have been missed,” and describes the APB as the interagency vehicle for “coordinating a whole-of-government approach to prevent mass atrocities and genocide.”

This order, like most of the anti-atrocities agenda, was premised on the U.S. doing more, invariably in terms of adopting a more confrontational posture when civilians’ lives are at risk.

But the anti-atrocities agenda has matured in a different context from that which sparked its creation; one where use of force has been re-legitimized, unraveling the consensus against aggression, with disastrous results for entire civilian populations. And so, despite anti-atrocities policies, violence against civilians is rising. The continuing ‘global war on terror,’ (albeit under another name) intersects with realpolitik uses of state power and popular challenges to state power (such as the ‘Arab Spring’) to spark intractable deadly conflicts.

The war in Iraq, for instance, cost between 166,627 and 185,831 civilian lives since 2003. The decision to ‘protect’ civilians in Libya after 1,000 deaths were recorded in February 2011, resulted in a conflict that killed 30,000 people. War in Yemen, in which the US supports a Saudi offensive has resulted in an estimated 6,500 civilian deaths since March 2015, and destroyed civilian infrastructure. And in Syria, where the government is undeniably the greatest perpetrator of violence, the conflict is fueled by many third-party agendas playing out on Syrian soil and at the expense of Syrian lives. Among these actors is the U.S.–joined by Russia, regional powerhouses and non-state armed groups.

The liberal peacemaking consensus, which opened the door to the protection of civilians agenda, is retreating as military ‘solutions’ come back into favor–a shift led by the U.S. and seized upon by others. Atrocities prevention and response fail as civilian protection becomes subservient to hard security interests. Civilian protection does not primarily result from doing more, but rather from doing foreign policy differently. So rather than a whole-of-government approach to atrocities prevention and response, what is needed is a foreign policy that priorities civilian protection as a strategic goal, understanding that the long-term interest of the U.S. resides in a community of nations that enjoy the stability that emerges from concern with and accountability to their populations.

We need a foreign policy debate that builds on principled concern for civilian protection as articulated in the anti-atrocities policy agenda, which is married to a strategy for protection that expands across and shapes U.S. foreign policy, per se. The question that I would like to see debated, and which has implications for U.S. domestic policy as well is: What would a U.S. policy defined by the goal of de-legitimizing use of force against civilians and prioritizing peace-building look like?

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/02/the-foreign-policy-debate-id-like-to-see/feed/1Introduction: the foreign policy debates we’d like to seehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/02/introduction-the-foreign-policy-debates-wed-like-to-see/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/11/02/introduction-the-foreign-policy-debates-wed-like-to-see/#respondWed, 02 Nov 2016 13:26:28 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3529Thankfully, the farce that was this year’s U.S. Presidential election campaign is almost over; while a Clinton win looks very likely (although we cannot rule out a Trump win which would force us to another set of debates…) , the turmoil of the election is a telling indicator of the state of American politics. Many of the big questions facing the country have not even been touched upon, let alone debated on the facts and reconsidered in light of the country’s long-term strategic interests. There has been no mention at all of world peace.

We are adding to this discussion by highlighting some key foreign policy debates that we would have liked to see discussed–and which we hope might still enter the public debate under a new administration. Our goal is to use this blog as a platform for a wide-ranging discussion of how U.S. foreign policy could be reshaped to contribute to peaceful international relations, while rising to today’s global challenges. We seek an exchange of ideas from those who are in favor of committed internationalism, but support a range of policies and approaches. Please feel free to join in the comments or via Facebook, and add the questions you wished had been seriously debated in the Presidential elections.

Saudi Arabia’s military campaign, as is their armed forces in general, is heavily dependent on arms supplies from the USA and the UK: planes, missiles, bombs, armored vehicles, as well as strategic and logistical support. UK arms giant BAE Systems has 5800 employees in Saudi Arabia, working to support and maintain the Saudi Air Force and Navy.

This lack of any condemnation or rebuke from the British is par for the course when it comes to Saudi Arabia. Saudi human rights abuses, both within the Kingdom and now, much more lethally, in Yemen, are typically met with silence, equivocation, and a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” response.

There is more than one factor behind the UK’s essentially unconditional support for Saudi Arabia. The fact that the country is the world’s single largest oil producer and is seen by the West, including the US and the UK, as a force for stability in the region, is clearly important. But a key reason for the UK’s particularly abject subservience to the Kingdom’s interests and desires is the extreme dependence of the UK arms industry on sales to Saudi Arabia.

According to SIPRI data, 45% of UK exports of major conventional weapons between 2011-2015 were to Saudi Arabia. This probably understates the proportion of the UK arms trade that is with Saudi Arabia, as it does not include the on-the-ground services provided by the above-mentioned 5800 BAE personnel. (The UK government breaks down the total value of arms export orders by region, but not by country). According to the 2015 Annual Report of BAE Systems, by far the UK’s largest arms company, 21% of their 2015 revenue was from sales to Saudi Arabia. Given that a large proportion—at least 40%—of BAE’s revenue comes from their operations in the USA, and to a much lesser extent Australia and Sweden, this means that the Saudi business accounts for clearly over one third of the company’s UK-generated revenue.[1]

The common assumption is that “it’s all about the money”. Of course, for private companies and their shareholders it is. But for the UK economy as a whole, arms exports are of little significance, accounting for less than half of one percent of GDP, and an even smaller proportion of employment.[2] For the UK government, I would argue, it is rather more about the industry; that is, about maintaining what is known as the UK’s “Defence Industrial Base” (DIB).

Almost all major, and even intermediate, military powers, seek to build a domestic arms industry, seeing this as essential to maintaining national autonomy in military affairs. Even those that cannot hope to produce major weapons systems such as combat aircraft, or advanced military technology, may wish at least to be able to support and maintain equipment bought from overseas. The UK is no exception to this, and has one of the largest and most advanced arms industries in the world. Maintaining this has been an important priority of both Labour and Conservative governments over the years—seen as a matter of core strategic interest.

BAE, after a decade and a half of consolidation at the end of the Cold War, stands firmly in the center of the UK DIB. And, as noted, business with Saudi Arabia is a huge chunk of BAE’s business. This is centered on the massive Al Yamamah series of arms deals with Saudi Arabia, worth over £40 billion from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, which included most notably the supply and subsequent support of 120 Tornado combat aircraft. More recently, major contracts have included: a £4.4 billion deal to supply 72 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft to Saudi in 2007, a £3.4 billion Air Force support contract in 2012, a £1.6 billion deal for 22 Hawk trainer/light combat aircraft also in 2012, a £1.5 billion Tornado aircraft upgrade contract in 2013, and a deal for a further 22 Hawk aircraft in 2016.

Saudi business is also important for other major UK arms companies, such as Rolls Royce, who co-produce the engines that go in Eurofighter Typhoons sold to Saudi Arabia, and other companies such as Cobham and GKN in BAE’s supply chain.

The question for the British government then, is not simply how much profits would fall, or how many jobs would be lost (though that is often the public face of the argument defending the arms trade), but the ability of BAE to maintain production lines and retain key skills and capabilities during the gaps between UK government orders for major systems. Moreover, the strategic priority given to the arms industry affords them a prominent place in the corridors of power, with extensive influence on government policy-making, and a constant ‘revolving door’ between government and industry, as has most recently been documented by Campaign Against Arms Trade’s report on arms industry political influence. Basically, there are strong institutional factors, amplifying the core strategic motivation, against the government doing anything that might jeopardize BAE’s relationship with Saudi Arabia—and by extension, anything that might displease the Saudi regime.

Perhaps the most brazen example of this was in December 2006, when the government of Tony Blair forced the cancellation of a Serious Fraud Office investigation into corruption in the Al Yamamah deals. The official excuse, that the Saudis had threatened to break off anti-terror intelligence cooperation, leading to “blood on the streets” of Britain[3] was paper-thin; given that, as an appeal court judge pointed out, no attempt was made to find an alternative to abandoning a judicial process in response to this blatant threat of terrorism. A far more plausible reason is that the Saudis had also threatened to pull the plug on further arms deals, specifically the “Al Salam” deal for Typhoon aircraft that was sealed the following year.

The evidence of corruption in the Al Yamamah deals is extremely strong, and well-documented by The Guardian newspaper in particular, with extensive records of a network of offshore shell companies used to transfer as much as a billion pounds in bribes to top Saudi Prince Bandar and other key members of the House of Saud involved in the deals. Successive UK governments, who negotiated the deals directly with the Saudis, can scarcely have been unaware that such ‘inducements’ were a key part of the process.

The decision to cancel the SFO investigation caused massive controversy domestically and abroad. It was almost overturned in a judicial review, with both the High Court and Court of Appeal declaring the decision to be illegal, before this verdict was finally overturned by the House of Lords.

Internationally, the cancellation of the investigation was severely criticized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), as being in breach of an OECD convention on bribery to which the UK was a signatory. The affair severely damaged the UK’s reputation for anti-corruption efforts internationally. But the Blair government considered this a price well worth paying to maintain the ‘special relationship’ between the UK arms industry and the House of Saud.

Taking us back to Yemen, this special relationship also effectively exempts deals with Saudi Arabia from the UK’s arms export controls, which the government likes to boast (extremely dubiously) are the toughest in the world. Neither Saudi Arabia’s brutal record of human rights abuses or denial of the rights of women has any bearing, nor the massive corruption involved in the deals, nor the terrible human toll of their campaign in Yemen, present any obstacles to the UK continuing to permit—and indeed encourage—arms transfers to Saudi.

The UK’s export licensing criteria, which reflect the European Union’s Common Position on arms exports, do not per se forbid arms transfers to countries on the basis of their human rights record, or even their involvement in war crimes. Rather, each potential arms export is evaluated on a case-by-case basis relating to the equipment being transferred as well as the end user. The criteria do, however, forbid transfers of equipment where there is a ‘clear risk’ that it may be used to commit human rights abuses or violations of international humanitarian law (i.e. the ‘laws of war’), or where it would provoke or prolong internal armed conflict. Moreover, the UK has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Arms Trade Treaty, signed in 2013, which contains similar provisions.

The evidence that UK weapons are in fact being so used by Saudi in Yemen is, however, overwhelming. The Saudi Air Force, which leads the bombing campaign, is composed entirely of US and UK-supplied planes, and UK Tornado and Typhoon aircraft are playing a central role in the campaign. Meanwhile a leaked UN report earlier in 2016 provided evidence of 119 separate incidents of violations of IHL by the Saudi-led bombing campaign. Moreover, in May 2016 Amnesty International published evidence that fragments of British-made BL-755 cluster munitions had been found in the aftermath of a coalition air strike. The BL-755 is designed to be dropped from a Tornado aircraft, sold by BAE to Saudi Arabia as part of Al Yamamah.

As a result of these developments, the government’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia are now the subject of a judicial review, successfully sought by the UK NGO Campaign Against Arms Trade. Two Parliamentary Select Committees have called for a suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

The government’s response has been to blindly maintain that they are following their export licensing criteria, and that the threshold for denying licenses—though this merely requires that there is a ‘serious risk’ that equipment may be misused—has not been met.However, they have been forced to change their story to Parliament; having previously claimed to have investigated reported violations by Saudi Arabia, and found no evidence, they quietly corrected this in July, stating instead that they had not been able to assess such claims. It is not hard to read between the lines that they have studiously avoided assessing such claims, but have rather done all they can to avoid exposing themselves to evidence that would require them to halt the arms sales.

Thus, in the cause of continuing arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the UK is willing to squander its international reputation on anti-corruption, to violate the same Arms Trade Treaty that it so ardently promoted, and to appear as blatantly hypocritical in its (rightful) condemnation of Syria and Russia’s bombing of Aleppo, while actively supporting and facilitating Saudi bombing of Yemen.

The irony is that, in order to maintain strategic autonomy through the preservation of the domestic arms industry, the UK has sacrificed much of its autonomy in foreign policy, bending all other goals and interests to those of its number one foreign buyer. It is often claimed that arms exports give the seller leverage over the buyer; but in the UK’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, it is the opposite: the customer is always right.

[1] This includes the turnover from support operations in Saudi itself, which are linked to sales of UK-manufactured equipment.

[2] Forthcoming report by the author, “Special treatment: UK government support for the arms industry and trade”, Campaign Against Arms Trade/SIPRI, October 2016.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/31/the-customer-is-always-right/feed/0Introducing WPF’s Sam Perlo-Freemanhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/28/introducing-wpfs-sam-perlo-freeman/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/28/introducing-wpfs-sam-perlo-freeman/#commentsFri, 28 Oct 2016 12:25:34 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3499In our offices, we have a kitchen table which, as in many work and home spaces around the world, is where some of our most compelling conversations take place, prompted by informality and collegiality. I will be trying to capture the spirit of these conversations in a new interview series with my colleagues. The first interview [...]]]>In our offices, we have a kitchen table which, as in many work and home spaces around the world, is where some of our most compelling conversations take place, prompted by informality and collegiality. I will be trying to capture the spirit of these conversations in a new interview series with my colleagues. The first interview took place on October 24th, with our newest staff member, Sam Perlo-Freeman, who is taking the helm of the WPF’s program on the global arms business and corruption. Sam comes to WPF after nine years of working with SIPRI on the military expenditure database, and is one of the world’s leading experts on global arms sales.

Bridget Conley: How did you become interested in doing research on the international arms business?

Sam Perlo-Freeman: I have peace campaigning pretty much in my blood. I was bought up in a very political family. I was on CND demonstrations in my preteens in the 1980s and founded a local CND group when I was thirteen.

BC: What is CND?

SFP: Campaign for nuclear disarmament in Britain. I was involved in that from a very early age. Then later in university, during my post graduate studies, I started moving on after the Cold War, when the nuclear issue had lost some of its immediate salience. I started becoming interested in the international arms trade. This was prompted by seeing John Pilger’s film, “Death of a nation,” about East Timor and the Indonesian genocide. This violence was completely enabled and supported by arms sales from the US primarily, but also the UK, to Indonesia. At the time that got me interested in the arms trade issues related to conventional weapons and I became involved in Campaign Against the Arms Trade in the UK. From there it was a fairly natural step to start looking at a more academic angle, a research angle. It played to my strengths and I ended up doing another PhD in defense and peace economics, looking at military spending and arms transfer to developing countries. That is how I got involved in researching the issue, while always trying to keep one foot in the campaign side as well.

BC: How many years did you spend at SIPRI?

SPF: Nine years.

BC: Nine years. And there, you were working on the military expenditure database. Could you introduce that project to our audience? What is that database and what was the work that you did on it?

SPF: I started out for the first year and a half on the arms industry database and a bit on the military expenditure database before moving on to run the military expenditure database. That is a database of military expenditure that until recently has gone back to 1988, with annual figures for about 170 countries where data is available. Over the course of the year, we collect source material — budget documents, expenditure documents, media reports, international organizations that report on military expenditure for all these countries, and they key research is to review all of these sources and try to form consistent series on military expenditure so that we can properly evaluate trends in each country over time.

The tricky thing is that there are so many different ways that military expenditure is reported that are not consistent across countries and very often not consistent over time. Countries change the way they report, or indeed if they report at all. The key work is in getting as far as is possible consistent and comparable series, which we then publish each year and make available to researchers, civil society, policy people, media and anyone who is interested. It always did get a very large amount of media interest every year when we reported it, and is very widely used by academics, students, civil society and so forth.

BC: How did you deal with the challenges that, at least in some cases, the deals are actually quite shadowy. There is quite an effort to cover up where the money is coming from, who it is going to, what the arms are–what detective work did that job entail?

SPF: That is one of SIPRI’s other databases: the arms transfers databases, which I did also work on in the last year or so when we merged all three data projects: military expenditure, arms transfers and arms industries. The third one looks at the companies and their arms revenues.

In the military expenditure database we are not concerned with that. We very much wanted to be able to produce disaggregated data, personnel, equipment, operations, infrastructure, research and development, and so forth, but we haven’t had the time and resources to do that. So what we’re producing is total figures. Ultimately, that is dependent on national reporting. We know that very often there is hidden military expenditure, off-budget military expenditure. Where we could, we tried to look for items of spending in other budget lines, sometimes we could find that information, but most of the time, if its not reported, then it’s not reported. You can’t get it. You can sometimes footnote, “this excludes off budget expenditure on such and such,” but it’s rare that you could get details.

When you’re looking at arms transfers, it is actually surprisingly not as hard as you might think to get information on international arms sales. For the most part, companies, for the larger equipment, certainly, companies are quite happy to boast about the sales that they’ve been making. Governments also, are happy to show that their country is succeeding in making these arms sales. And if we’re talking really big things like planes, boats, ships, and tanks, it’s kind of hard to hide them.

For the arms transfer database, we search through dozens of different sources: mainstream media, specialist defense media, blogs, national reports on exports or imports, reports of the United Nations, arms nerds, sites where arms nerds post photos of military equipment or reports of military parades, or something like that, showing off the latest equipment that the country has acquired. I am sure that we miss some things, but I think for what SIPRI is trying to do with that database, focused on major conventional weapons, we catch the great majority of what is going on.

What is much harder to trace is small arms and light weapons. Small Arms Survey, another organization, do work on that, but they do not attempt to give a comprehensive picture of the trade in small weapons, because that is easy to hide. It is very often not reported on. It happens in all sorts of back channel deals, arms are smuggled across borders, and so forth, often very porous borders, so there is very little reporting. Keeping track of the trade in small arms is essentially impossible. You can do case studies of particular areas, particular conflicts, to get some sort of a picture, but getting an overall comprehensive picture — that’s not possible.

BC: And what do you think is the value of these datasets? It’s an enormous undertaking to update them every year. What do they enable us to see? What do they empower for people who use that data?

SPF: They allow us to see overall trends and ballpark figures of how much is being spent on the military worldwide, and how the arms trade worldwide is growing or shrinking. Who are the big players? Which countries are increasing their spending or their acquisitions which countries are cutting it. I think it’s very helpful in helping provide a picture of what’s going in this area in the military sphere worldwide. It’s a very valuable instrument of transparency, allowing citizens and civil society to see where their money is going, what their government is doing, and comparing it with other countries in as far as is possible in a reasonably consistent and comparable way.

I think in that respect as an instrument of transparency and shining some source of light on the scale and nature of international military spending, arms acquisition and trade, it’s very useful. It certainly is very widely used by researchers, students, civil society, political decision-makers, communities, and diplomats make very extensive use of this. The media report on it extensively, so it seems to be something very much in demand. We also saw it as a global public good.

BC: There is a lot of social science research documenting that wars are increasing after some time of decrease, and particularly internationalized wars that tend to use heavy equipment and to last longer. Do you see a comparable rise in the scale in military expenditures? Or are these two things not necessarily linked?

SPF: Military expenditure increased very rapidly after 9/11. That was led by the United States, very much followed by a bunch of other countries. But this was before the big general increase in conflict. Of course, the U.S. was in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which played a part in the US increased spending. But in other parts of the world, it was driven by strong economic growth, in particular by very high oil revenues, which tend to be channeled to military spending often in very corrupt ways. One can also see international rivalries – US/China, for example — at the root of this, but not necessarily conflicts. In conjunction with this, the international arms trade has been growing steadily according to SIPRI figures even after world military spending (which includes personnel, operations and maintenance, procurement, R&D, and construction/infrastructure, etc.) stopped rising after the global economic crisis. Since then you’ve seen falls in the west pretty much offset by increases in other parts of the world. In conjunction with this, the international arms trade has been growing steadily since the early 2000s, and that’s continued even after military spending stopped rising, as its driven more by demand in the developing world which has continued to grow.

Again, this increase in the arms trade predates the increase in conflict, which has really been since 2011. And again, oil seemed to be one of the big factors in it. Huge oil revenues when the price was high. New countries were discovering new sources. A lot of the big buyers — Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Venezuela, Algeria have been countries with a lot of oil revenues.

BC: Has there been any impact of the Arms Trade Treaty on expenditures?

SPF: On expenditures or transfers? No. It would be hard to track it, in any case, since it was only signed in 2013 and only just recently came into effect.

The Arms Trade Treaty is about getting countries to establish a system of regulation, if they haven’t got it. That is one definite positive about it, if implemented. There are various efforts at capacity building in developing countries to help them implement it and implement proper systems of regulation if they don’t have them already. How much effect that will have, we don’t know. But that is mainly to stop the illegal, illicit trade in arms, mostly small arms and light weapons.

There are also criteria that countries are supposed to follow in deciding whether to export arms—such as whether they might be used in violation of international humanitarian law, to stop wars and so on – but in general, though, they’re weaker criteria than what already exist in most European countries, for example, and criteria which are routinely ignored or interpreted in ways that are very favorable to the arms industries, and which basically are designed to have enough leeway for interpretation as to never stop a major arms deal if a country wants to make it for political industrial reasons. The Arms Trade Treaty is not going to change that, apart from the fact that lots of countries haven’t signed it, or haven’t ratified it. When it comes to major deals, the Arms Trade Treaty isn’t going to stop one major transfer that would have taken place without it. What it may do is to have some countries put in place more systematic systems of regulation than they had before. It might help in combating the illicit trade. So there might be some marginal gains for it. It’s possible in the long run that it might be one step towards establishing a sort of international norm against transfers that are used to bomb civilians and so forth, but that is a very long term effect. And as we see in Syria and Yemen, it’s not apparent so far.

SPF: So this is on the global arms business and corruption. It’s been going for a few years at a sort of slow burn level led by World Peace Foundation and a group of international researchers and campaigners that I was a part of. Among our collaborators is Andrew Feinstein of Corruption Watch UK—he is a former South African MP and anti-corruption campaigner now, who has a fantastic book out now, The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, and a film based on it, “The Shadow World”, which is – well, I don’t know if it is in theatrers near you, right now, but it’s on in New York and it’s hopefully going to go around the country and the world.

The project has been looking at the way that not just the way that the arms trade and business involves systematic corruption–because of its secrecy, the huge sums involved, it’s connections to national security, which gives it a large degree of impunity from a political level — but also the way that this corrupts national decision-making processes, undermines democracy, the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower spoke of.

Now we are going to be putting more resources into it with me working full time on this project. We’re going to be building up a sort of dossier, a database of corrupt arms deals or arms deals for which there are allegations of corruption. We are continuing to explore as we have been in the project over the last couple years the myths that sustain the global arms trade industry. These are myths about national security and spending being for national security, militarist unquestioned assumptions that sustain and facilitate the arms trade and enable corruption. In addition to developing the research angle, the project has a campaigning angle, trying to build up a network of activists in different countries who are working on this issue in their own countries to provide them with resources, maybe capacity building to enable and support their work in combatting militarism, corruption, and so forth in their own countries.

BC: Thank you very much, Sam.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/28/introducing-wpfs-sam-perlo-freeman/feed/1‘The Big Man’ a review of Guichaoua’s ‘From War to Politics’ by Alex de Waalhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/27/the-big-man-a-review-of-guichaouas-from-war-to-politics-by-alex-de-waal/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/27/the-big-man-a-review-of-guichaouas-from-war-to-politics-by-alex-de-waal/#respondThu, 27 Oct 2016 15:34:10 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3502In the of the 3 November 2016 edition of the London Review of Books, Alex de Waal reviews From War to Genocide: Criminal Politics in Rwanda 1990-94 by André Guichaoua, translated by Don Webster. Below are excerpts, the full review is available from LRB.

There was certainly a determined effort to kill every Tutsi [...]]]>

In the of the 3 November 2016 edition of the London Review of Books, Alex de Waal reviews From War to Genocide: Criminal Politics in Rwanda 1990-94 by André Guichaoua, translated by Don Webster. Below are excerpts, the full review is available from LRB.

There was certainly a determined effort to kill every Tutsi in Rwanda between April and June 1994, and it was state policy. But it was a hastily improvised policy, cobbled together a few days after the assassination of Habyarimana, whose presidential jet was shot down near Kigali Airport on 6 April, when the decapitation of the government led to the panicked radicalisation of the regime’s lieutenants.

[…]

Guichaoua’s account explains some of the mysteries of the Rwanda genocide. Why did Théodor Sindikukwabo, a lethargic man of little reknown, become interim head of state during the genocide? Why did Agathe, leader of the best organized and most ruthless political machine in the country, spend the next few weeks after her husband’s death making a panicked attempt to flee the country? Why was a retired colonel named Théoneste Bagasora, the engineer of the assassinations of the moderate political establishment in the days after Habyarimana’s death, convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda of acts of genocide, but acquitted of conspiracy to commit genocide?

[…]

If genocide was the product of confusion, error, and the politicking founded on personal interest, rather than a long-thought-out plan, we require a framework that enables us to understand how everyday politics can turn to violence. During the 1980s, the Hayarimana regime had dominated a closed domestic political marketplace, using patronage funds (aid and export revenues from parastatals) and regulating by coercion. This model collapsed in 1990. The RPF threatened to take over and run the country using the same model. Unfortunately for Habyariamana, political liberalisation — demanded by both the population and aid donors, especially France — became inevitable at precisely this point, and so members of the political elite felt able to choose between his party and the RPF. Many of them took democratisation and the peace accords seriously, and assumed that the model of political competition regulated by elections and the rule of law would prevail. The price of loyalty shot up.

Mogadishu’s half-ruined, half-built urban landscape is strangely compelling. This is an ocean-front city, its masonry bleached by the sun, every block and intersection holding a memory of what was once there, and an imagination of what it might yet be, if today’s economic regeneration continues. Somalia’s capital has gone through a quarter-century of battle and rebuilding in rapid cycles, each leaving its own mark on the fabric of the city.

Andrew Harding, who has repeatedly visited Mogadishu as a BBC journalist since 2000, is fascinated by the city and how to make sense of it. In his new book, Mogadishu becomes legible through the biography of one man, Mohamed Nur, known as “Tarzan”.

Tarzan was born into a nomadic family in the country’s arid hinterland. After his father died, he came to Mogadishu as a child, arriving in 1961 on the one-year anniversary of independence.

Statistical analysis of conflicts and mediation efforts in Africa from 1960 to 2012 points to five main conclusions. First, African third party mediators are more likely to conclude peace agreements, and those agreements are more likely to be durable. Second, however, African third parties with political bias are less effective. Third, sanctions and coercive measures are less effective than positive financial incentives in bringing about peace. Fourth, mediated peace agreements are often fragile, and imposed peace agreements should be avoided. Fifth, the most effective formula is African leadership in peace processes backed by international support.

Systematic comparison of the effectiveness of African and nonAfrican third parties reveals some surprising conclusions. African third parties are typically referred to as ineffective because of a low degree of economic and military capacity. However, drawing on data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program supplemented with unique data, which together cover all mediation efforts in Africa between 1960 and 2012, reveals quantitative evidence supporting the effectiveness of African third parties. Compared to non-African third parties, African third parties are far more likely to conclude peace agreements and these peace agreements are more likely to be durable. Much of the success of mediation efforts depends on the relationship between the third party and the conflict parties rather than the material capacity of a third party to coerce conflict parties into peace.

A major caveat regarding the finding that African third parties outperform non-African third parties is that that the involvement of a biased African third party in mediation processes has a negative and statistically significant effect on mediation success. Since conflicts in Africa have strong regional dimensions, African states have frequently openly supported incumbent governments or have provided covert support to rebel parties prior or simultaneously to their mediation attempt. The statistical analysis employed in this paper suggests that the involvement of biased African third parties that are supporting or have supported one of the conflict parties undermines the prospects for mediation success.

Furthermore, not only does the type of third party influence the prospects for mediation success, but also the mediation strategy that is employed. Contrary to popular belief, sanctions and the use of force are ineffective instruments in making conflict parties sign a peace agreement. By contrast, the use of sidepayments to induce the conflict parties to make peace does significantly increase the likelihood of the conclusion of a peace agreement. The use of negative incentives to move conflict parties towards signing a negotiated settlement is less likely to work than the use of positive, financial incentives.

While mediation has a strong positive short-term impact, the long-term effect of mediation is found to be much more negative. Indeed, evidence suggests that peace agreements that have come about without any mediation are more stable than mediated agreements. Additionally, peace agreements that have been mediated solely by non-African third parties are particularly likely to fail. A plausible explanation for this finding is that non-African third parties are more inclined to impose a peace agreement. Conflict parties with ownership over the peace process is a crucial condition for ensuring post-agreement stability. Mediators should therefore take great care to prevent external third parties suffering from “signature obsession” to highjack the peace process and impose an agreement.

Finally, while mediation by African third parties is more effective than non-African mediation, most effective are mixed mediation efforts in which African and nonAfrican third parties mediate jointly. Particularly effective are mixed mediation efforts in which there is coordination between African and non-African third parties, but in which African third parties take the lead. The phrase, ‘African solutions to African challenges’ should be understood as a division of labour and responsibilities, rather than an excuse for non-African third parties to ignore Africa’s problems or African third parties acting on their own. Indeed, while African third parties should take the lead in mediation processes in African armed conflicts, non-African third parties should support these processes by lending additional strength. Through supplementing each other’s comparative advantages, African and non-African third parties can tackle the problems of Africa.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/18/african-solutions-to-african-challenges-international-mediation/feed/0The End of Interventionismhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/13/the-end-of-interventionism/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/13/the-end-of-interventionism/#commentsThu, 13 Oct 2016 18:40:17 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3491Below is an excerpt, the full essay was published by The Boston Review on October 13, 2016.

The era of the West’s enthusiasm for military intervention is over. Two reports on Iraq and Libya—written from the heart of the British establishment and published recently—have delivered its obituary. Each is damning; together, they dismember the case for intervention in both its neocon and liberal-hawk variants. Although their focus is almost exclusively on decision-making within Whitehall—the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the Ministry of Defence, and, above all, No. 10 Downing Street—Americans will recognize many of the same ills afflicting their own government.

The 2003 Iraq invasion arose from the hubris of neoconservatives. Its ostensible targets: weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. Its ambition: to spread democracy and American-style corporate capitalism. It was long planned, but not, it seems, well planned. Many liberals opposed the Iraq intervention because they disliked its architect and suspected its motives. But they still believed that Western, and especially U.S., military power, used assertively, could make the world a better place.

The 2011 Libya bombing was a swift response by liberal hawks to what most agreed was an imminent massacre. It was both opportunistic—a material interest in Libya’s oil industry, and bolstering French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s faltering political stature were strong motivations—and also a test of the noble doctrine of the “responsibility to protect,” adopted at the United Nations in 2005. The ensuing debacle has been as responsible as the Iraq War for discrediting interventionism—in this case, in its liberal form. Its most obvious consequence has been the refusal of Western powers to act decisively in Syria. But there have been other repercussions too, such as shifting the burden for robust international military actions in Somalia, Mali, and potentially South Sudan to African nations.

One of the causes of the genocide in Rwanda was that the kleptocratic government of President Juvenal Habyarimana lost the resources it needed to maintain its centralized patronage system. In the disordered competitive politics that [...]]]>

One of the causes of the genocide in Rwanda was that the kleptocratic government of President Juvenal Habyarimana lost the resources it needed to maintain its centralized patronage system. In the disordered competitive politics that followed, his party and others turned to violent political mobilization.

South Sudan was a modestly functional kleptocracy from the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005 until the financial crisis unleashed by the suicidal decision to shut down national oil production in 2012. The kleptocratic system of rule laid the foundations for crisis. But it was bankruptcy, and the resort to violent dispute over a shrinking patrimony, that unleashed the civil war. [See my Occasional Paper on South Sudan, which explains the extreme perils of a collapsed political market].

Under President Ali Abdalla Saleh, Yemen was a highly complex political market, centrally manipulated. It maintained a modicum of order. When fiscal crisis hit, for multiple reasons, the president lost the grease he needed to keep the wheels of kleptocracy turning, and the country plunged into crisis.

I could go on: the slide into civil war in Sudan in the 1980s, the collapse of Somalia in 1990-91, the electoral violence in Kenya. I describe cases and mechanisms in my book, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa.

The most dangerous moment in a kleptocracy is the slide into insolvency. That’s when its rulers (political business operators) become desperate and willing to contemplate extreme measures.

Part of the reason why Enough has got it wrong is that it uses a simplistic definition of kleptocracy as the rule of thieves. A more sophisticated definition is a system of government in which the laws of supply and demand determine the allocation and use of public office. Another reason why Enough misleads is that its starting point is not the problem itself (the complex dysfunction of countries like South Sudan) but the tools that the U.S. government can bring to bear.

Kleptocracy—in both senses of the word—is a serious problem that needs to understood and resolved. Addressing corruption is a serious issue that needs a serious response. But Enough’s idea that driving these systems to bankruptcy is wrong and dangerous.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/12/bankrupting-kleptocracies-is-a-dangerously-bad-idea/feed/0Virtual issue of African Affairs on South Sudanhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/07/virtual-issue-of-african-affairs-on-south-sudan/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/07/virtual-issue-of-african-affairs-on-south-sudan/#respondFri, 07 Oct 2016 14:26:06 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3486Alex de Waal has a new essay introducing African Affairs‘ virtual issue on South Sudan. As the journal’s editors explain, the virtual issue is the journal’s contribution to making in-depth analysis available to the wider public for free: “often, journalism and advocacy on South Sudan is ill-informed and simplistic. This virtual issue of African [...]]]>Alex de Waal has a new essay introducing African Affairs‘ virtual issue on South Sudan. As the journal’s editors explain, the virtual issue is the journal’s contribution to making in-depth analysis available to the wider public for free: “often, journalism and advocacy on South Sudan is ill-informed and simplistic. This virtual issue of African Affairs is making some of our best articles on South Sudan freely available. Making well-informed, empirically rich, and analytically rigorous research accessible serves to influence a better understanding of South Sudan’s crisis.”

Not only have policy errors in western capitals contributed to the country’s predicament and the suffering of its people, but better-informed, more empirically rich and analytically rigorous research is available, which is highly relevant to understanding South Sudan’s crisis. Those more academic writings are cautionary: they advise against simplistic formulae for resolving South Sudan’s complicated problems.

Rita Abrahamsen’s ‘Letter to George Clooney’[i] chides the actor and his organizations, the Enough Project and its subsidiary The Sentry, for their partisan, belated and simplified coverage of South Sudan. The occasion of her critique was a much-hyped report by The Sentry, ‘War Crimes Shouldn’t Pay’,[ii] which contained photographs of the lavish houses of the political and military leaders of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and Army (SPLA), pictures from their children’s Facebook pages of them dressed in loud suits in the first class cabins of aircraft, and information about their business investments. The Sentry writes, ‘The key catalyst of South Sudan’s civil war has been competition for the grand prize—control over state assets and the country’s abundant natural resources—between rival kleptocratic networks led by President Kiir and Vice President Machar.’ Abrahamsen points out that African Affairs published scholarly papers on corruption, patronage and economic mismanagement (which The Sentry doesn’t cite) over many years.

She could have added that these were also much more detailed and analytical and provided a better guide to policymaking than Clooney’s far-fetched notion that putting financial sanctions on South Sudanese leaders could end the war. In a reversal of the former Washington Post publisher Philip Graham’s adage that journalism is ‘the first draft of history’: it is the scholars of South Sudan who have led the way. This introductory essay to the online selection of African Affairs articles documents and analyses this phenomenon.

A close association between social anthropology and policy is not new in South Sudan: successively in the colonial period, the post-colonial era of a developmental state, and the long war and associated humanitarian enterprises, Sudanese and foreign scholars have both informed and critiqued official policies. African Affairs has been one of their venues for publication. There is a long list of notable papers.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/07/virtual-issue-of-african-affairs-on-south-sudan/feed/0“South Sudan: The Road to Civil War” with Professor Mahmood Mamdanihttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/04/south-sudan-the-road-to-civil-war-with-professor-mahmood-mamdani/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/04/south-sudan-the-road-to-civil-war-with-professor-mahmood-mamdani/#respondTue, 04 Oct 2016 17:50:25 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3481Should we treat mass violence in civil war situations as criminal violence or political violence? Is the individualization of criminal violence an appropriate method to deal with accountability for mass violence? Through the lens of African politics and focusing on the case of South Sudan, Professor Mahmood Mamdani led a public discussion examining [...]]]>Should we treat mass violence in civil war situations as criminal violence or political violence? Is the individualization of criminal violence an appropriate method to deal with accountability for mass violence? Through the lens of African politics and focusing on the case of South Sudan, Professor Mahmood Mamdani led a public discussion examining these questions surrounding crime and punishment in the context of civil war. The lecture was held as part of The Mellon Sawyer Lecture Series presented by The Comparative Global Humanities Center for the Humanities at Tufts.

Since the independence of South Sudan in July 2011, violence and tension have increased. In 2013, violence erupted in Juba and spread, taking with it the lives of thousands in a matter of weeks. As a member of the African Union Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan (AUCISS), Mahmood Mamdani, along with other members of the commission traveled the country to assess the activities on the ground. In its report, the commission classified the violence in South Sudan as mainly criminal. However, Mamdani offered a minority view arguing that the violence was political. This division of conceptions between criminal and political violence, and what each requires from the state and constituencies in terms of seeking justice, provided the conceptual foundation of Mamdani’s lecture.

The outbreak of violence in South Sudan in 2013 was accompanied by various political motivations. One, identified by Mamdani, was the motivation of the South Sudanese political leadership to separate society into “us vs. them.” This strategy, he argued, turned the crisis from political to ethnic. While it had been common for neighboring tribes to fight over resources in the past, these tensions were exacerbated by external influences that emphasized tribalism over common culture.

Mamdani then traced the roots of tribalism in South Sudan back to the British colonial era. The British solution to ruling a multi-ethnic state with mobile populations, he argued, was to draw hard, territorial boundaries around identity. The system held ethnicity as an exclusive, as opposed to permeable, identity within a bounded homeland. The result, Mamdani asserted, was the politicization of ethnicity and fragmentation among groups, which directly contributed structural tension and mass violence.

The role of external actors has continued to influence the conflict in South Sudan. The failure of the Troika (EU, US, and Norway) to broker a lasting peace with the 2005 peace agreement, Mamdani argued, strengthened the armed dictatorship of the North and created an armed dictatorship in the South. “Only those with the capacity to wage war have the ability to determine peace,” Mamdani stated, asserting the role of external actors in creating an environment where impunity flourishes, and both external and internal actors become “too big” to be held accountable for their actions. If the demand for accountability is not enforced against the “big players” like the Troika, argued Mamdani, there can be no criminal accountability in South Sudan.

Tribalism, impunity, and violence created an environment where political violence flourished. Defining violence in this scenario as criminal, Mamdani asserted, will not create any lasting political reform. He highlighted the danger of the “one size fits all” mentality that reduces all violence to criminal violence. If all violence is treated as criminal, justice is reduced to a question of crime and punishment. One need not sacrifice context or principles to create a solution that addresses issues of political reform.

Mamdani concluded his remarks by arguing that the political foundation for the existence of a state has yet to be forged in South Sudan. “It’s unfair to call South Sudan a failed state,” he remarked, “when it’s a failed transition.” Mamdani argued that the AU and UN response to the violence in South Sudan, the brokering of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, was inadequate, and questions still remain of how to create accountable structures, fight internal and external impunity, and find lasting peace in the country.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/10/04/south-sudan-the-road-to-civil-war-with-professor-mahmood-mamdani/feed/0The danger of researching ‘in silos’: lessons from the Chinese famine of 1876-9https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/27/lessons-from-the-chinese-famine-of-1876-9/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/27/lessons-from-the-chinese-famine-of-1876-9/#respondTue, 27 Sep 2016 13:56:27 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3477As a researcher, it is easier to replicate the work of scholars who have already worked on a subject, than to come up with original research. This is, of course, self-evident, but it is a trap that is surprisingly difficult to evade. I learned this the hard way, when researching the Chinese famine of 1876-1879. [...]]]>As a researcher, it is easier to replicate the work of scholars who have already worked on a subject, than to come up with original research. This is, of course, self-evident, but it is a trap that is surprisingly difficult to evade. I learned this the hard way, when researching the Chinese famine of 1876-1879.

“Too often, famines and mass atrocities that involve forced starvation have been studied separately. Specialists in food and agriculture tend not to analyse war and genocide. Scholars of mass atrocity focus on violent killing, and have not analysed mass death from the perspective of starvation and disease. International criminal prosecutors have concerned themselves with direct violence—murder, torture, and rape—avoiding the question of culpability for starvation.” (de Waal 2015)

The idea behind the project was to create a dataset recording two overlapping events: the first was the incidence of ‘great famines’ since 1870, that is famines which caused more than 100,000 excess deaths (Devereux 2000), and the second, drawing on work by David Marcus (2003), was to record the incidence of armed conflict during these famines and the use of deliberate mass starvation in these conflicts. I was, therefore, interested in the mortality from the famines as well as the political context in which famine occurred.

Imperial China had a long history of famines and disasters, but the North China Famine of 1876-9 was its most lethal. Drought struck China’s five large northern provinces in 1876, and by the time the rains returned, an estimated 9-13 million people had died of starvation or famine related diseases (Edgerton-Tarpley 2013). A number of scholars have written about this, and they only seemed to refer to conflict in passing (Edgerton-Tarpley 2008; Li 2007; Davis 2001), and it seemed that state incapacity was the primary reason hampering famine relief (Fuller 2015). I recorded the numbers, but did not look deeper.

At the first presentation of the dataset at LSE in London, the way I had coded the 1876-9 famine was challenged. A member of the audience argued that there was active armed conflict in China at that time. Chastened, I returned to the library and found that real picture was complicated, and while I was not completely incorrect, neither was I completely correct.

Famine was preceded by periods of colonial conflict with Japan, England and Russia. Further, China’s north-western frontier had witnessed conflict: the region now known as the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region had been occupied by Russia in 1871, and then had been the center of various localized revolts. The perception of colonial threat and conflict led the Qing Court to allocate scarce resources to the construction of coastal defences rather than famine relief, and although this changed as the famine worsened, the damage was done. These added to the difficulties of coordinating famine relief and transporting the available grain (Edgerton-Tarpley 2013).

My initial research had fallen into the very trap that the broader research project was intended to address; by looking at the famine as an isolated incident, I had missed the broader political context in which the famine had taken place. Expanding the scope of my research to include a diversity of sources helped me understand this.

Notes

Davis, Mike. 2001. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. London, Verso.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/27/lessons-from-the-chinese-famine-of-1876-9/feed/0Staying safe in armed conflict contextshttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/24/staying-safe-in-armed-conflict-contexts/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/24/staying-safe-in-armed-conflict-contexts/#respondSat, 24 Sep 2016 00:52:06 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3473In case you missed our program this afternoon, below is a re-cap via storify, with thanks to Roxani Krystalli. The program, Staying safe in armed conflict contexts: What do crisis-affected people prioritize and does it work? Do humanitarian actors and others take note?, focused on self-protection. Speakers included:

Edward Thomas, Author, former head of UNICEF Child Protection in South Sudan and Nepal, and former adviser for the International Commission of Inquiry on Syria

Norah Niland, Center on Conflict Development and Peacebuilding, The Graduate Institute, Geneva and former Director of Human Rights in UNAMA and Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Afghanistan

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/24/staying-safe-in-armed-conflict-contexts/feed/0Event Summary: Legacies of Political Violence in Latin Americahttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/20/event-summary-legacies-of-political-violence-in-latin-america/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/20/event-summary-legacies-of-political-violence-in-latin-america/#respondTue, 20 Sep 2016 19:55:36 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3469At what point and for what reasons does political violence evolve into genocide? When, if at all, does a genocide end? Does post-conflict violence constitute a legacy of genocide or its continuance? On September 15, 2016, the World Peace Foundation hosted a presentation of Dr. Roddy Brett’s new book, “The Origins [...]]]>At what point and for what reasons does political violence evolve into genocide? When, if at all, does a genocide end? Does post-conflict violence constitute a legacy of genocide or its continuance? On September 15, 2016, the World Peace Foundation hosted a presentation of Dr. Roddy Brett’s new book, “The Origins and Dynamics of Genocide.” Brett focused on these questions, arguing that in Guatemala, the period of heightened lethal violence (1981 – 1983) needs to be understood within the longer context of oppression of the Maya population which began before and continues thereafter. Building on over a decade of ethnographic research in survivors’ communities, Brett documents the historical processes that shaped the genocide and analyzes the evolution of both counterinsurgent and insurgent violence, how this violence has impacted the civilian population, and the survival strategies that civilians adopted.

Brett began his presentation by highlighting the underlying conditions that make the evolution of political violence into genocide possible, including the intensification and normalization of violence over time. This, he argued, combined with the strategically enforced, racist narrative of Guatemala’s indigenous population as “the other,” created pre-genocidal conditions that paved the way for the escalation of violence. Ideology mattered, Brett argued, and the framing of the indigenous population as “irredeemable” played a key role tipping the scales of political violence into genocide.

Uninhibited violence became the norm, Brett argued, for several reasons. First, Brett argued that political violence was an extension of the failed nation-building project, wherein the goal was to homogenize society in a way that eliminated the existential threat presented by the indigenous population. Second, organized violence was introduced to continue the pursuit of this goal when nation-building failed. Racism structured the uses of violence, in which the state-sponsored “us vs. them” ideology led perpetrators (the Army and forces associated with the state) to morally disengage from the violence and further dehumanize the indigenous population.

Brett moved on to address issues surrounding the indigenous population’s experience of the genocide. While the overwhelming experience across indigenous communities was of being directly targeted for violence, they were also involved in resistance to the State as well as participation in state-sponsored violence. Some indigenous communities and individuals collaborated with or tolerated guerilla groups. Likewise, some were pushed to participate in violence organized by the State out of fear, or as a way to protect themselves and their families.

Finally, Brett argued that although the period of heightened lethal violence ended in 1983-84, the effects of the genocide—which he described as a continuance– are experienced by the population to this day. As example, he discussed the trial of Rios Montt and truth telling mechanisms. The fact that such procedures have occurred marks a triumph as these endeavors have the power to interrupt elite narratives of the genocide and make room for healing among victimized populations. However, the higher court’s decision to overturn the Montt conviction, Brett argued, constituted a validation of the genocide and represents the perpetuation of structural violence against the indigenous population. The trial annulment and continued destruction of indigenous communities through indoctrination programs represent manifestations of the genocide’s continuity in the present and are a type of “silent, invisible murder.”

Brett concluded his remarks by focusing on the process of reconciliation. He noted that while peace processes sometimes have the ability to “telescope” nation building outcomes—that is, to accelerate the pace of political change– one cannot “telescope” the issues at the heart of transitional justice. The disconnect between human emotions, violence, and the peace-building process is particularly acute when victims receive no effective recognition from the state. This constitutes a “second injury” wherein people feel that, despite the progress on paper, “everything remains the same.”

Brett was joined by Dr. Kimberly Theidon, whose research addresses political violence, transitional justice, and the politics of post-war reparations, for a discussion. Her questions teased out nuances of his arguments and highlighting the destructive nature of impunity, the roles played by indigenous soldiers in carrying out massacres, and the strategic use of gendered violence in the Guatemalan genocide.

Theidon highlighted the role of impunity in “making genocide thinkable.” Brett reiterated that impunity helps validate violence, and that both legal and social impunity played a role in creating the pre-genocidal conditions in Guatemala. Another contribution to these pre-genocidal conditions, thought Theidon, was the continued support, both financial and ideological, of the Guatemalan government by the United States. Brett agreed and noted that, within the national security framework, U.S. funding, training and political support Guatemala enabled and provided cover for the escalation of violence.

Theidon echoed some of Brett’s remarks on the participation of indigenous men in the genocide, but specifically questioned the role of sexual violence played. She noted the relationship between violence against women, seen as the keepers and reproducers of culture, and the cultural and biological racism against indigenous peoples. In his response, Brett noted the role dehumanization played in making such violence possible, and that sexual violence, particularly rape and forced sterilization, was a pointed part of the campaign of both physical and cultural destruction of indigenous people.

Finally, Theidon questioned the definition of genocide- is it a process with a clear beginning and end or does the perception of its continuance among the indigenous population warrant the use of different or altered terminology? Normative frameworks and definitions can evolve, Brett argued, and it is worth asking if today’s definition is adequate considering how the effects of genocide are still felt generations later by indigenous Guatemalans.

Following Theidon’s discussion with Brett, the event opened up to include questions from the audience centering on reconciliation, the motivations of indigenous soldiers, and the debate between legacy and continuity. Brett took this opportunity to re-emphasize the need for true reconciliation—which he defined as an honest dialogue between perpetrators and victims— which has not occurred in Guatemala. He reiterated that the continuing and evolving effects of the genocide still reverberate through Guatemalan society today. Even if people don’t go to prison, he argued, different types of justice must begin to address the root causes of the conflict for any future successful reconciliation to occur.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/20/event-summary-legacies-of-political-violence-in-latin-america/feed/0War is security is peace: President Obama’s ‘new beginning’ with the Muslim world and the Nobel Peace Prizehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/15/war-is-security-is-peace/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/15/war-is-security-is-peace/#respondThu, 15 Sep 2016 17:21:02 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3458Every assessment of an American President’s role in world peace implicitly requires us to take positions on two questions: First, what does world peace mean? Second, how do we evaluate an American president’s role in achieving it?

Perhaps a minimum definition of peace (‘negative peace’) is the absence of war. Everywhere? In most of the [...]]]>

Every assessment of an American President’s role in world peace implicitly requires us to take positions on two questions: First, what does world peace mean? Second, how do we evaluate an American president’s role in achieving it?

Perhaps a minimum definition of peace (‘negative peace’) is the absence of war. Everywhere? In most of the world? Between states? An end to civil war and violent repression? The eradication of weapons of war? Could the USA, as a supreme global hegemon, help keep the peace by policing wayward states in the tradition of Pax Romana?

Even if we could agree on an answer to this first question, the answer to the second is even more difficult. Should we evaluate presidents on the basis of their stated desire for world peace? Or should we expect their actions to be consistent with their rhetoric? Is it enough to be consistent some of the time? President John F. Kennedy is remembered as a young, idealistic president who averted a world war, despite his failure to adhere to pacifist ideals in Vietnam and Laos.

President Obama’s early speeches seemed to try and answer these foundational questions. American power is an instrument of peace, Obama seemed to argue. Security is necessary for the maintenance of this power. To achieve security, however, one has to wage war. In his view, therefore, security and peace are not competing choices: American security is a necessary precondition for peace.

Barack Obama became president on 20th January 2009, elected, almost as an antithesis to his predecessor; one of his stated foreign policy goals was to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this vein, and barely six months after becoming president, Obama gave a speech at Cairo University, where he called for a ‘new beginning’ in America’s relationship with the Islamic world.

In many ways, it was a thoughtful and courageous speech. He spoke about his own history of growing up in Indonesia, of Muslims in his own family, and of the debt that the world owed to Islamic civilization. He was even-handed: he confessed American culpability for past misdeeds, yet criticized those who would demonise the USA. He signalled a commitment to ending the Israel-Palestine conflict, and to closing the prison at Guantanamo. He praised democracy, while promising to respect existing systems of government. Yet, above all, he reaffirmed his commitment to American security.

“…In Ankara, I made clear that America is not — and never will be — at war with Islam. We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security — because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children. And it is my first duty as President to protect the American people.

The war in Afghanistan, Obama claimed, was a necessity:

“…make no mistake: We do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can.”

After the speech, a blogger wryly noted: ‘Obama devoted twice as much time to ‘violent extremism’ as to democratic governance.’

Later, that very year, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, almost in anticipation of what he was going to achieve. He acknowledged this in his acceptance speech (watch it here), where he clearly outlined his vision of American security and world peace. His peace prize speech was almost entirely devoted to a justification of war, and the role played by the USA in underwriting global stability since the end of World War II. To continue playing this role, Obama seemed to argue, the USA must first be secure.

“We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified…

I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people… To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.”

These were, of course, early days in Obama’s presidency. The ‘surge’ in Afghanistan had only just been announced, while the Libyan intervention, the Arab Spring and the disenchantment that followed lay in the future. Obama had still not had to engage with ISIL, the catastrophic civil war in Syria or resurgent violence in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had not expanded a program of targeted assassination by drones. Through all of these, however, Obama’s policies have largely adhered to the principles laid out in to these speeches. Absolute peace is not achievable, Obama has said. Yet even an imperfect form of peace requires American power and leadership (in other words, hegemony) to be ‘secured’ first.

Security[1] has become the overwhelming framework of governance in the 21st century, and in fact, much has been written about how the power of fear drives social relations in the world today (Goldstein 2016; Goldstein 2010). The need to bolster American security has been used as a justification for armed intervention abroad, as well as the domestic erosion of civil liberties. For Obama, however, security serves a slightly different purpose: it is an instrument for the maintenance of American power and exceptionalism. Peace may follow.

Obama is a thoughtful and pragmatic leader, and he has tried to define security interests narrowly, but a decision-making framework which defines power and security as necessary for peace can be self-defeating. The difference between Obama’s foreign policy and that of his predecessor is one of degree, rather than substance. Their policies diverge on how much (and where) war needs to be waged to secure American power. As a result, and despite the hope and expectation (and anti-war tenor) around Obama’s election, he is likely to leave office as the only American president who has spent the entirety of his two terms at war. In Cairo and in Oslo, he hinted at this co-option of peace into the American security project; whether the world will remember him fondly for it remains to be seen.

[1] Here, I understand security to mean the broader practice and narratives around real or perceived threats: how are certain issues characterized as threats to national or global security, and what responses become permissible because of such characterization? An excellent example is the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa: characterizing an infectious disease as a global/national security threat allowed the deployment of militarized responses, which arguably had little to do with solving the health crisis.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/15/war-is-security-is-peace/feed/0Eisenhower on “our charted course”https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/12/eisenhower-on-our-charted-course/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/12/eisenhower-on-our-charted-course/#respondMon, 12 Sep 2016 14:01:09 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3443In his final address to the American public as President, on January 17, 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned of the rise of a military-industrial complex and the threat it posed to what he saw as the ultimate goal of U.S. foreign policy, peace. Eisenhower’s insights emerged from his intimate knowledge of war, drawing on his prestigious career as a military professional, during which he served as commander of the Allied invasion into North Africa in 1942 and the Normandy Invasion in 1944, military governor of the U.S. occupied zone following Germany’s surrender, and as the first NATO Supreme Allied Commander. Eisenhower valued the goal of peace and realized that its priority as a guiding ideal for U.S. policy was undermined by a set of interests that were being cemented and expanded in the Cold War climate. He described the potentially distorting impact on U.S. policy—not only by intricate design but also “unsought” as ideology, interests and profit converged around militarization:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

The farewell speech did not address the most important domestic issue of his era: simmering social conditions in the United States, particularly the increasing expression of anger and frustration within African-American communities that had suffered brutal and unequal treatment for too long. A legalist, when the Supreme Court forced his hand, Eisenhower called in troops to see that the decision to de-segregate schools went forward, but it was not an issue he personally championed.

Instead his speech focused on foreign policy, and it included a nod to Congress that, in today’s climate, reads like fiction:

the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

His words did not betray his fears, expressed in an earlier draft of the speech, that Congress was a fundamental part of the military-industrial complex,[i] a problem that has not diminished with time. For instance, in recent years, pork-barrel earmarks purchase military equipment even the military doesn’t want, including ships, tanks, and many other items. And these are just programs that Pentagon insiders think are wasteful, see the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and the Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) as two among many voices drawing attention to broader areas of DoD waste.

Waste, however, was not Eisenhower’s foremost concern when he drew attention to the military-industrial complex. Rather, he was concerned with the distortion of interests that skewed the focus of U.S. foreign policy. For him, peace was the measure of how American power and influence are wielded in the world. He stated:

America’s leadership and prestige depend, no merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment….to strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people.

This was not his first foray into the question of peace, having sought to de-escalate tensions with the USSR, a task made easier with the death of Stalin in 1953, and proposing “Atoms for Peace,” a program that sought to develop nuclear capacities for non-military uses, like energy. However, the speech was perhaps his most powerful articulation of an internal threat to peace.

Against the backdrop of the Cold War, and drawing on his own experience as a senior military officer who knew well (qua Clausewitz) that concerning the outcomes of any military action, the ratio of the unpredictable to the predictable is high, Eisenhower stressed that the “danger promises to be of indefinite duration.” To meet it successfully, the U.S. did not require the “emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis,” but rather steady leadership and the political art of balancing interests, such that trade-offs between the present moment and the future, competing sources of power, and cost and advantage would be carefully weighed. While crises will certainly continue, he cautioned, one must avoid the temptation to seek “spectacular and costly action” in the hopes of forging some sort of miraculous conclusion.

Threatening to upend such a careful balance was the emergence of a permanent military industrial sector, unprecedented in American history. In the context of the Cold War, these words referenced the uninterrupted development of major weapon systems and the way in which the economic benefits of their procurement influenced political life.

This threat remains with us. As example, today military spending so outrageously outpaces the civilian capacities within U.S. foreign policy, that a catch-22 develops[ii] whereby existing capacity means the military takes on ever more tasks—like humanitarian aid delivery, development programming, global public health, and intelligence, simply because it is so much better resourced and hence more capable, and hence is further invested in. For instance the 2016 budget deal, allocated $573 billion for defense and another $58.6 billion for overseas contingency (war effort). The State Department and USAID – whose combined budgets were $50 million — are caught in a cycle of underfunding, with reduced capacity and influence. Today, the US military is an enormous global logistics system dressed in camouflage. Those engaged in war fighting, who know the deep cut of violence, compose only a tiny sliver of its overall personnel: of the 1.53 million total active duty US military personnel, some 450,000 are stationed overseas, and this is in addition to 811,000 reserve component end strength, and 773,000 civilian full-time equivalents.[iii] These figures do not include contractors, who play ever increasing roles both in and out of active combat. As a country, the United States has failed to invest in its diplomatic mechanisms for peaceful resolution of conflict, and instead prioritizes the militarization of all functions of its international relations.

What is more, the “Global War on Terror” extends and expands the threat Eisenhower identified. In a “war” that alternates between active combat, often-intangible battles with ideology, and discrete, secretive actions, the congressional-military-industrial complex has further evolved and more profoundly threatens peace. In addition to the skewing factor of commercial and political interests in large-scale weapon systems, tilting the balance of democratic practice further away from the interests of peace is the expansion of securitization and intelligence. We must now speak of a security-intelligence-military industrial complex, which ebbs away at transparent democratic practices.[iv]

Eisenhower, who spoke with the insight and authority of a man who personally knew war too well, stated:

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years — I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Today we have many fewer politicians with military experience, and neither of our two major choices for President have so bravely put use of force in its proper place, subordinated to political solutions sought through diplomacy, and in the service of world peace. Nor can we today conclude, as Eisenhower did, that despite failings in the pursuit of peace that “war has been avoided.” We live in a time when war is no longer a state of exception; it has emerged from behind its shadow of illegitimacy and is lauded as patriotism par excellence by those who do not suffer its impact.

A transcript of the full speech is available here, and a short video about the speech is available here. about Eisenhower’s use of the term “military-industrial complex.”

NOTES:

Image from the Reading Copy of the Speech, available through the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library Museum and Boyhood Home https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/farewell_address.html

[i] See, Evan Thomas, who writes: “Staff Secretary Andy Goodpaster routinely recorded Ike’s gripes about the coziness between defense contractors and congressmen. Goodpaster later said that Eisenhower would have referred to the ‘military-industrial-congressional complex,’ but left out Congress ‘out of respect for the other branch of government’” (399), in Thomas, Evans. 2012. Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

[ii] See Rosa Brooks.2016. How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon. New York: Simon & Schuster.

[iv] See Michael Glennon. 2014. “National Security and Double Government,” Harvard National Security Journal 5: 1 – 114. Addressing the stability and continuity of national security policy across the Obama and Bush administrations, Glennon argues: “America’s ‘efficient’ institution (actually, as will be seen, more a network than an institution) consists of the several hundred executive officials who sit atop the military, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement departments and agencies that have as their mission the protection of America’s international and internal security… The United States has, in short, moved beyond a mere imperial presidency to a bifurcated system—a structure of double government—in which even the President now exercises little substantive control over the overall direction of U.S. national security policy.”

As of 2015, 43 peace operations had deployed to 15 different African countries. Africa’s increasing efforts to support its own peace operations have led to African peace and security organisations both leading on, and contributing the mainstay of personnel to, these missions. This paper examines a number of African peace operations and analyses the evolution of the mission mandates. A selection of four representative peace operations – Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Somalia, and Darfur – which differ in terms of timeframe, implementing authority, size and conflict dynamics are examined to assess patterns, trends and anomalies of mandates over the life cycle of their missions.

Academic and policy-related literature places emphasis on the impact of UN Security Council geopolitics, roles and responsibilities supporting civilian protection, the AU’s financial, materiel and human resource deficiencies, and the role of peacebuilding. However, little has been written on the evolution of wider peace mission mandates as well as the role of African organisations in developing these mandates.

The analysis of the case studies reveals six trends, outlined below, which address both the content of the mission mandates and the way in which the mandates were produced.

Linkages between initial mandate text and provisions of peace agreements: The text of initial mandates tends to reflect the text and provisions of the peace agreements, as well as the real issues and situational aspects on the ground. For most African peace operations, and particularly for African mandates, the peace agreement is brokered based on consultation and consensus of local actors in the conflict, which raises interesting issues for the role of African Mediators.

The value of African-led mediation and facilitation capacity: Despite being a valuable resource, which shapes and informs the operational and political components that are deployed thereafter, African mediation, dialogue and conflict resolution capacity lacks institutional systems and support. Although both the UN and the AU have developed mediation support units (MSU) – and despite the UN having a well-developed roster of international mediation experts – the AU’s MSU continues to focus only on the analysis of ‘lessons learned’ and postmission analysis and not the human, financial and logistical requirements that these panels and groups require.

The ‘partisan’ nature of TAMs and the impact on TAM outputs: The importance of the African-led mediation and facilitation efforts should also be examined against the outputs of the Technical Assistance Missions (TAMs) which are often deployed to peace operations to provide feedback for both the Chairperson of the PSC and the UN SecretaryGeneral. Whereas the data notes synergies between the work of the African-led mediation and facilitation panels and the feedback provided to the AU PSC through technical reports, the connection between the outputs of AU mediators/technical assessment reports and the UN mandates was less evident. A look at the composition of the UN TAMs reflects representation from most of the organisation’s peace and security related organs. It could therefore be argued that the UN TAM reports that influence evolving UN mandates become skewed by the competing interests of members of the TAM.

‘Universal’ vs ‘Core’ Mandates: The analysis in this paper exposes the fact that a relatively ‘templated’ approach is taken to the development of UN mandates. The templates which serve as the framework for mandate extensions and renewals also bear a direct correlation with the strategic policy agenda in place across various UN Departments at the time of the mandate expansion. Where more detailed and countryspecific requirements are included in the mandate, these non-templated requirements often form part of either AU mandates or text of AU resolutions which have influenced UN mandates. Moreover, it appears that the ‘bloated’ nature of the mandates comes normally as a result of tasks and activities from previous mandates not being discarded from the new mandates. Templated aspects of UN mandates reflect more of a ‘universal’ mandate that arguably justifies the applicability and relevance of UN policy and programmes to field-based realities in conflict-affected countries. However, within the initial mandates, and often preserved during the mandate’s expansion, a ‘core’ mandate remains.

Lack of clarity supporting the concept of ‘peacebuilding’: Peacebuilding missions either begin to co-exist with, or subsume, Chapter 7 peace operations which are mandated to ‘use force’ or ‘all necessary means’ for protection of UN personnel, aspects of the civilian populations and often the mandate. This issue poses questions for the future of peacebuilding, and what the UN’s Peacebuilding Support Office, and the Peacebuilding Fund (PBF), has envisioned as a renewed role for the concept.

Lack of exit strategies: The final trend noted in the data findings is the lack of support which mandates provide for ‘exit strategies’. Whereas the words ‘exit’ and ‘exit strategies’ are mentioned irregularly in some of the UN resolutions, these references refer to decisions taken by the organisation to withdraw. In this case, the concept of an ‘exit strategy’ therefore refers more to the UN’s organisational requirements and not those of the host country. Whilst work has been undertaken by the UN to support more effective local transitions through ‘benchmarking’, such benchmarking must be based on well-informed and non-partisan strategic objectives.

Key Messages: Based on the research findings, the authors propose the following recommendations:

That the AU and UN develop institutional support mechanisms which can retain the drawdown services of effective African-led mediation and facilitation panels and provide these panels with financial, logistical and technical support, as well as a budget supporting the mediation talks and meetings which they are required to convene.

That the UN work together with the AU (particularly within the current UNSC-AUPSC and UN DPKO-AU PSOD partnerships) to learn lessons from AU-led technical assessment and fact-finding processes with a view to developing a more nonpartisan approach to the production of strategic objectives that should shape and inform mandates.

Benchmarks should be considered at the beginning of a mission but should only be developed once clear and effective strategic objectives (and supporting objectives) shape the mission’s mandate.

The UN should commission research which analyses the relationship between peacebuilding and Chapter 7 peace operations. The paper recommends that peace operations should not become ‘re-branded’ as ‘peacebuilding missions’ until: 1) UN PBSO further clarifies the types of activities which support peacebuilding and 2) until there is certainty that a further escalation of violence, or requirement for a parallel stabilisation mission, questions the existence of a peacebuilding mission.

This paper analyzes the African Union (AU)’s normative framework on Unconstitutional Changes of Government (UCG), and is intended to serve three purposes: to trace the origins of the norm, identifying the major gaps; to review the AU’s implementation and enforcement of the norm; and to discuss potential means for reconciling the identified gaps between the norm and practice. It recommends:

1. The consolidation of the instruments containing the various norms against UCG into a single framework consisting of:

a. first, a clear statement that the object of the norm is to protect the will of the people and does not preclude their right to peacefully protest against oppressive systems;

b. second, a clear, comprehensive list of the circumstances that constitute UCG, including those listed in the Lomé Declaration and the 2007 Addis Ababa Charter, and expanded to include issues such as retention of government power without holding free and fair elections for a prolonged period of time, election rigging and election malpractice duly ascertained by a credible, independent body, and c. third, a comprehensive list of measures to be applied in case of UCG.

2. Elaboration of provisions to address the gaps in the UCG norm, including by:

a. providing a mechanism that outlines specific guidelines to determine when popular uprisings are or are not UCG;

b. articulating the standard by which restoration of constitutional order and lifting of sanctions is to be judged, and

c. avoiding divergent application of the norm on UCG; this could be accomplished by the AU and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) agreeing on a process for assessing whether the required conditions for UCG were met.

3. Elimination of the distinction between UCG, serious human rights and democratic deficits. To do this, the sanctions applicable in UCG cases should also be applicable to cases of systematic violations of human rights and democratic principles. Additionally, the AU Peace and Security Council should develop mechanisms for operationalizing Article 19 of the founding Protocol (on establishing close working relationship with the African Commission and Court on Human and People’s Rights).

4. Establishment of an expert group on the implementation of the AU norm on UCG as its subsidiary body which would offer technical support in assessing and monitoring different elements of UCG on the continent.

Key Findings:

Between 1952 and 2014 there were 91 successful coups in Africa, and prior to 1990’s, coups had become the main mode of political contestation and leadership change in the majority of African states. They eroded and undermined constitutional rule, entrenched bad governance and created conditions inimical to citizen’s freedom (including by encouraging future coups). This changed with the revival of multi-party politics in Africa in the 1990s, which led to the emergence of a belief in elections as the only legitimate basis for assuming and retaining government power. Building on this belief, the O/AU has become not only the defender of democracy and constitutional rule on the continent, but has also taken on the role of promoting democracy and helped enshrine the norm against the UCG in various legal instruments. Through norms like the UCG, the O/AU has even exceeded the United Nations in expansively articulating the conditions that would be considered threats to peace and security.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/07/unconstitutional-changes-in-government-and-unconstitutional-practices-in-africa/feed/0The African Peace and Security Architecturehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/01/the-african-peace-and-security-architecture/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/01/the-african-peace-and-security-architecture/#respondThu, 01 Sep 2016 18:52:01 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3431The below is from a WPF research briefing paper, “The APSA: Norms and Structures for the AU’s Peace Missions,” produced as part of the African Peace Missions project. You can access the entire collection of research briefings and the final report, “African Politics, African Peace,” on our website.

Key Messages:

The African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) consists of norms and mechanisms developed over the last fifteen years. These are wide-ranging and their full implementation would be a major advance for peace and security.

The current APSA needs to be expanded to ‘APSA Plus’. One part of this is to include mechanisms for enhanced engagement with the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and Regional Mechanisms (RMs) that are increasingly active in matters of peace and security in their respective regions. Another element is to rise to the challenges of ‘shared spaces’ of the Red Sea and Mediterranean, with new mechanisms for managing Africa’s growing web of relations with trans-regional and extraregional organizations (T/XROs);

The rapid deployment capability of the ASF is weak to nonexistent. There is a need to limit the task of the existing ASF, managed by the AU Commission, to consensual peacekeeping, and develop a separate ASF concept for peace enforcement operations that depends on the role of a lead region and a lead state, with the AUC retaining the responsibility for mandating and setting norms and standards for such operations;

The existing pillars need to be expanded to include measures such as strengthening the Peace and Security Department (PSD) and its Mediation Support Unit. There is also room for important norm development on democratic constitutionalism and inclusivity in peace processes, and on guidelines for distinguishing between terrorist acts and terrorist organizations.

Drawing on the history of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), it is clear that the project of the AU was driven by a genuine multilateralism expressed in its pan-African agenda of completing the liberation of Africa from colonialism and its non-allied movement. The original mission and objectives of the OAU were successfully completed by the liberation of South Africa from Apartheid rule in 1994, prompting the need to redefine the vision and mission of pan-Africanism in general and that of the continental organization in particular.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, Africa was marginalized and neglected by the international community. It was treated mostly as a humanitarian case. The policies and actions of the global powers treat Africa primarily through a security lens (the war on terror and international policing) and a commercial lens (investment opportunities). At the same time, Africa faced multiple crises: the Rwandan genocide, the DRC crisis, the statelessness of Somalia, the war and crisis in several West African countries including Liberia and Sierra Leone. This situation both allowed and required African nations to take primary responsibility for peace-related activities in Africa.

The International Panel of Eminent Personalities, established by the OAU to investigate the Rwandan genocide, called for African states to adhere to a principle known as non-indifference. This idea, which framed Article 4(h) in the Constitutive Act for the African Union, calls for a commitment to an African solution for African conflicts and codifies the responsibility for collective African action in the gravest circumstances. The new norm supplemented rather than supplanted the OAU’s original principle of noninterference, and is only a part of the norms related to peace, security and democracy within the overall Constitutive Act. The APSA was thereby developed following the transformation of the OAU into AU.

The wider architecture for advancing peace and stability in the continent defines the different components of the APSA and its pillars, which include the Peace and Security Council (PSC), the Continental Early Warning System (CEWS), Panel of the Wise, African Standby Force (ASF), African Peace Fund (APF). The APSA was developed “incrementally” in response to the environment of the end of the 90s and the beginning of the new century. APSA should also be understood as an instrument with an internal focus on how the AU relates to the various African Regional Economic Communities. Hence, it lacks structures and mechanisms for dealing with extra-regional organizations that overlap with Africa, forming its “shares spaces.” There is a need to develop an APSA Plus mechanism to help the architecture better reflect the current dynamics.

Another distinction in the African practice of conflict resolution is the contextual and holistic approach taken, which differs from the politically driven approach implemented through large powers like the UN and NATO. There needs to be a “recalibration” of APSA instruments to ensure effective implementation of its stated objectives. The paper breaks down the five pillars of the APSA to discuss the functions of each pillar and determine the gaps that the AU should address to more effectively implement its instruments.

The Peace and Security Council (PSC) is the AU’s organ for preventing, managing and resolving conflict. It derives its operational authority from Chapter VIII of the UN Charter and is legally junior to the UN Security Council. However, the PSC’s nature as the first responder to African crisis situations and its capability to drive an African narrative related to peace and security shows that it is also an actor on its own right and therefore needs to be equipped with the right instruments and mechanisms to enable it live up to the expectations. African states should take the appointment of their permanent representatives to the AU PSC seriously as the quality of the debates in the PSC and the uptake of PSC decisions by the respective member states also depends on the quality of the permanent representatives.

The PSC needs to establish appropriate consultative, operational, and legal relationship with African Regional Economic Communities (RECs). There is also the need to tighten the relationship of the A3 members of the UNSC and the AU/PSC so that the A3 reflects the positions and directions of the AU PSC at UNSC decisions.

The Panel of the Wise needs to be formally expanded to include mediation support mechanisms with the responsibilities of developing norms to guide mediation and political processes within the given changing conflict and mediation dynamics. These guidelines should address: the determination of an appropriate mediation sponsoring agency and the selection of mediations under a given condition; how to manage political processes involving terrorists; and models for creating panels of experts for crisis situations to enable appropriate expert support and inputs.

The rapid deployment capability of the ASF is weak to non-existent. There is a need to limit the task of the present ASF to consensual peacekeeping, and develop an ASF concept for peace enforcement operations that depends on the role of a lead region and a lead state, with the AUC retaining the responsibility for mandating and setting norms and standards for such operations.

The effectiveness of the CEWS needs to be enhanced by providing it appropriate conflict analysis capacity and creating the right mechanisms to enable it engage the policy level of the AUC. There is also the need for CEWS to be connected to peace missions, including political missions for the development and use of its conflict analysis and early warning products.

The African Peace Facility is an important pillar that mobilizes resources to finance African peace missions. For this pillar to be effective, African states must not only pay their dues on time, but also contribute to the peace fund. It is also important the APF aims to finance not only peace support operations, but also wider political missions and to ensure that the rest of the instruments of APSA are also well resourced. Africa is most effective when using its political missions and processes when compared to running peace support operations.

The APSA should move to APSA plus focusing on the primacy of the political in terms of ownership, problem definition, and resourcing with focus on Africa’s unique capabilities and norms.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/09/01/the-african-peace-and-security-architecture/feed/0What Went Wrong [in South Sudan]https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/08/05/what-went-wrong-in-south-sudan/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/08/05/what-went-wrong-in-south-sudan/#respondFri, 05 Aug 2016 15:18:47 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3425Excerpt from “What Went Wrong”. Full article published by The Cipher Brief, August 3, 2016.

At the heart of South Sudan’s descent into chaos is a failed effort at security sector reform. When Sudan’s long civil war ended in 2005, the U.S. – along with other donors – poured money and expertise in trying [...]]]>

At the heart of South Sudan’s descent into chaos is a failed effort at security sector reform. When Sudan’s long civil war ended in 2005, the U.S. – along with other donors – poured money and expertise in trying to transform the guerrilla Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) into a professional army, the core institution for national defense when South Sudanese voted for independence six years later. These programs failed completely. In 2013, on the eve of the current civil war, the SPLA was a bloated, factionalized, coalition of militias, who split apart along ethnic lines.

[….]

On paper, the August 2015 deal that ostensibly ended the civil war promised a strategic defense and security review that would lead to the integration of the warring forces and the creation of a unified national professional army. But Kiir, Malong, and Machar took no steps towards this: Their focus was instead on the details of how many troops from each side would be permitted in the capital. This was transparently a calculus of the balance of force, should the deal collapse. And the peace deal neither resolved the power struggle between the nation’s leaders, nor provided the government with the funds to return to the former “big tent” strategy that might have bought stability for as long as it took to resolve the political disputes.

The international mediators of the peace deal pulled back from an early promise to demilitarize Juba, putting it under UN control. Instead, the two bitter and distrustful armies were supposed to jointly secure the city. The mediators defended it as the standard formula for post-conflict security arrangements. Realistically, it was a recipe for a conflagration.

That is precisely what happened on July 7, when Machar’s bodyguards killed five of Kiir’s soldiers. In response, Malong eliminated Machar’s forces in Juba. Malong and Kiir won a clear military victory in the capital – which has since quietened down – but no military solution is possible across the ethnically diverse terrain of South Sudan, with numerous well-armed groups each determined to defend its locality.

A central element in a working peace deal for South Sudan will be building a viable security sector. Next time around, the strategy should be guided by the country’s political realities, not wishful thinking that South Sudanese leaders are committed to peace and state-building.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/08/05/what-went-wrong-in-south-sudan/feed/0Outlining a research agenda on private militarism and political markets in Africahttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/08/02/outlining-a-research-agenda-on-private-militarism-and-political-markets-in-africa/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/08/02/outlining-a-research-agenda-on-private-militarism-and-political-markets-in-africa/#respondTue, 02 Aug 2016 14:45:00 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3410This note briefly outlines a research agenda on mercenaries and private military companies (PMC’s)[1] in Africa’s political marketplaces. It is driven by: (a) a desire to understand mercenarism within the context of broader political, economic and social changes in global and local governance; and (b) the need to move away from simplistic analyses [...]]]>This note briefly outlines a research agenda on mercenaries and private military companies (PMC’s)[1] in Africa’s political marketplaces. It is driven by: (a) a desire to understand mercenarism within the context of broader political, economic and social changes in global and local governance; and (b) the need to move away from simplistic analyses of mercenarism as ‘private for-profit’ usurpation of the state’s ‘legitimate, public’ security functions.

This research has practical implications. Studying private militarism can (a) help us better understand the emergence of new forms of security governance which are being created by cooperative and competitive interaction between a range of global, local, private and public security sector actors (Abrahamsen & Williams 2011); and (b) illuminate the changes in political systems which drive, and in turn are affected by these emergent forms of security governance.

Mercenaries today

Today’s private military and security companies are the latest incarnation of commercial militarism. They make up a multi-billion-dollar industry and provide a range of military, logistical and security services to an array of private public and multilateral actors. For instance, firms such as Halliburton, and Kellogg Brown and Root, provide technical and operational support, whereas others, such as Executive Outcomes (which has since morphed into several other companies), Reflex Responses and Sandline International actually participate in direct combat, or provide training to government and other multilateral forces. In places such as Somalia, the same firm could be engaged in supplying equipment, training local forces, accompanying national armies on missions as ‘observers’, and providing security to public or commercial assets at different times and for different parties.

Periods of mercenary activity have historically however, ended with the imposition of some form of governmental control. Mercenaries have either been subsumed into governmental apparatus, or replaced by the trappings of statehood. What is particularly interesting about this most recent phase of commercialized militarism is that it is taking place in countries which are transitioning into permanent political marketplaces, a form of political organization distinct from the classical Weberian state.

The globally integrated political marketplace refers to a monetized system of politics where political authority is not institutionalized. Instead, politics is run on the basis of personal transactions in which political loyalties and services are exchanged for material reward on a competitive basis. In these systems, the ‘conduct of political business as exchange’ is central, and ‘cooperation’ and ‘allegiance’ are commodities, whose prices fluctuate according to the laws of demand and supply (de Waal 2015). The political market should not be conflated with ‘state collapse’ or ‘state failure’; it is a functional political system – it competes with, and sometimes even displaces the process of state building in many countries. It is a distinct system: neither a colonial relic, nor a system necessarily destined to be replaced by the bureaucratic, centralized, and territorially bounded institutional arrangements which characterize the ideal state in political theory.

The existing literature on mercenaries in Africa is extensive but incomplete. Most writing on the topic can be classified into two broad camps (with notable exceptions): the first camp is predominantly ‘operational’ – it describes the fluid world of PMCs and individual mercenaries, and the role that they have played in different conflicts, but does not attempt to conceptually analyze these (see for example Singer 2003; Ortiz 2010; Fitzsimmons 2013). The second camp examines mercenaries in the context of neo-colonialism, state building and state failure, highlighting the role that they play in hollowing out democratic processes (Reno 1997; Musah 2002; Avant 2005).

Broadly, both camps treat mercenarism and privatized militarism as external to political systems: according to them, the emergence of mercenaries hinders the development of representative, accountable institutions and the creation of a monopoly over the use of violence within states. In short, mercenarism weakens the state, and allows the unacceptable entry of market forces into spaces of governance. This is, of course, a useful perspective (if an ahistorical one), but one that presumes all states to be on a long term path towards an ideal statehood. If, in reality, some African states display distinctive forms of political organization (such as the political marketplace), the role played by mercenaries in the political evolution of these states must also be reexamined.

The modern mercenary, I hope to argue, can be understood to be a component of the globally integrated political marketplace. Mercenaries emerge in response to supply and demand in the political market, but simultaneously influence the marketplace, reconfiguring and in some cases distorting price setting mechanisms. Anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia are an excellent example: In the mid 2000’s piracy became a way in which Somali political entrepreneurs extracted ‘rents’ from foreign ships to fund their political budgets. Services and training provided by PMC’s in guise of anti-piracy assistance were funneled into piracy operations by the Somali elite (Hansen 2008). In turn, this led to the employment of PMC’s by shipping companies for maritime protection services. As piracy became too costly or dangerous due to international navy patrols, political entrepreneurs who had formerly been the head of piracy networks began offering their services as counter-piracy experts and governmental anti-piracy envoys instead (UNMG 2012). In other words, PMC’s began operations because of particular incentives within the Somali political marketplace, yet their involvement reconfigured the marketplace.

We envisage three different components to this research: the first will examine the nomenclature of privatized security and mercenarism and their contested legality; the second will outline Africa’s historical experience of mercenary activity and set out why this recent surge of activity is conceptually different, and the last will consist of in-depth case studies of one or two countries where PMC’s have been active. We hope that this research will result in a conceptual re-examination of mercenary activity as a useful marker of political reconfiguration.

United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea (UNMG), “Letter dated 11 July 2012 from the Chair of the Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 751 (1992) and 1907 (2009) concerning Somalia and Eritrea addressed to the President of the Security Council.” United Nations Security Council, July 13, 2012, S/2012/544, 200.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/08/02/outlining-a-research-agenda-on-private-militarism-and-political-markets-in-africa/feed/0Reflections on the Report ‘African Politics, African Peace’https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/08/01/reflections-on-the-report-african-politics-african-peace/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/08/01/reflections-on-the-report-african-politics-african-peace/#respondMon, 01 Aug 2016 00:39:20 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3405This is the most recent report in recent efforts at reviewing peace operations. The UN undertook a thorough review of its peace operations through the UN High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO), which submitted its report in 2015. On the part of the AU, the first such review was the 2010 African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) review. The AU undertook similar review of the APSA as a follow up to the previous review. This resulted in the 2016-2020 APSA roadmap. While this report fits into and complements these various existing reports, it also has certain features that set it apart from these reports.

Much of the focus of the other reviews of AU peace operations has been on what this report calls instruments, the decision-making mechanisms and the tools that the AU has developed and used over the years. As it can be gathered from its title, ‘African politics, African Peace’ on the other hand puts singular emphasis on and dedicates considerable space to politics, particularly Africa’s politics of peace. This is given expression and best captured through what the report calls the primacy of the political. While similar language has been used in the HIPPO report, the scope and content of the primacy of the political in this report is different.

The report is unique in the clarity and depth of its articulation of the primacy of the political. It articulates the primacy of the political not simply in terms of the centrality of a political strategy that guides and leads the use of conflict management tools and a political process for resolving conflicts. Importantly it defines the primacy of the political as containing the norms and principles, ownership of the goals and strategies for peace and security and the precedence assigned to conflict prevention.

In drawing attention to and emphasizing the primacy of the political as the philosophical bedrock on which the edifice of AU peace and security is built, this report warns against and challenges the trend of resorting to security heavy responses to Africa’s challenges to peace and security. It urges a shift from the dominant reactive and ‘fire-fighting’ approach to a proactive and preventative approach. Indeed, taking the primacy of the political to its full application, not only does the report gives primacy to conflict prevention but it also makes the funding and finance ancillary to the political goals and strategies of peace missions.

The primacy of the political emphasizes that AU’s comparative advantage and hence the prospect of success of its responses to peace and security challenges lies not in hard security approaches but principally in the full and effective implementation of its norms and principles. The policy response to conflicts should principally be based on well thought out political strategies and processes. ‘The AU is strongest,’ in the words of the report, when it articulates and pursues a political agenda. Since the norms and principles of the AU highlighted in this report constitute the normative basis for AU actions, the report underscores that the formulation of political strategies for the prevention and resolution of conflicts should draw on and be informed by these norms and principles.

The report’s discussion on ownership of the goals and strategies of peace and security offers a fine articulation of and defense to ‘African solutions to African problems’. Thus, the report points out that the primacy of the political starts with and involves intellectual leadership. This entails both setting the political norms and principles and ownership of articulating those norms and principles in the realms of policy and practical political action. Central to the intellectual leadership is Africa setting the peace and security agenda and being at the centre of both the definition of the problems of peace and the efforts for solving the problems. As rightly pointed out, ‘[f]or Africa to set its own agenda for the future it must write its own history, or it will remain a prisoner of histories written by others; it must define its own problems, or find itself defined by its problems’.

Along the same lines, the report also acknowledges and emphasizes the need for African actors to shoulder the lion’s share of the burden for funding AU peace missions. The report argues that it is not clear how African ownership can be retained if the AU is seeking funds from others.

This report not only foregrounds the primacy of the political but also in the report the primacy of the political runs across the report and becomes the golden thread that ties the various parts of the report together. Thus, political strategies are made to define the funding needs and mechanisms of AU peace missions and not the other way round. Again, armed operations should be led by and serve political strategies and hence should not be pursued in isolation and in a political vacuum. Similarly, even for protection of civilians, for effective protection emphasis is put more on the political process than the military and security mechanisms.

The report also stands out in other ways as well. It identified the important areas of strength of AU’s politics of peace and its experience thus far, which need to be prioritized and further enhanced. These include its capabilities and norms, articulation of political strategies and goals and some areas of peace support operations for which the UN lacks comparative advantages. Similarly, the report also highlights some of the areas of challenges or gaps in AU’s exiting approach to peace missions. These include challenges surrounding AU-RECs relationships, the extra-African dimensions of African security challenges, the synergy and interplay between the African Governance Architecture (AGA) and the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA).

With respect to the African Standby Force (ASF), its most useful contribution is its call for drawing clear demarcation between peace enforcement, expected to be principally implemented by coalitions of the willing, and other forms of peace support operations for which the AU assumes full responsibility. Given the past 14 years experience of the AU in this area, the report also identified the themes that should be addressed in the separate doctrines that should be articulated to peace enforcement operations and other forms of peace support operations.

While there could be issues with particular subjects in the report, there are two general issues I observed on the report. First, the report rightly pointed out that the challenge facing the AU primarily is implementing of existing commitments. In this regard it makes the profound observation that a ‘major part of the implementation challenge is ensuring that the officials and staff entrusted with the continent’s peace and security agenda are fully cognizant of their responsibilities and capabilities. Equally important is the domestication and integration of these commitments into national governance and foreign and security processes of AU member states’. Despite noting these as major challenges, the report does not offer how this can be addressed and what the implications of these challenges are for AU’s peace missions.

The relationships between AU peace missions and international peace and security is another area. Here, while the report duly acknowledges the interface between the two and rightly identified relationships as one important component of Africa’s politics of peace, in its discussion on burden sharing it paid little attention to the price that African troops pay in lives and limbs and the resultant responsibility that this gives rise to on the international community including in financing AU peace missions authorized by the UN Security Council.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/08/01/reflections-on-the-report-african-politics-african-peace/feed/0On memory, coffee and an imperfect circlehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/27/on-memory-coffee-and-an-imperfect-circle/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/27/on-memory-coffee-and-an-imperfect-circle/#commentsWed, 27 Jul 2016 12:24:01 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3396On July 11, 2016, the twenty-first anniversary of the genocide at Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the installation, “Što Te Nema?” (why aren’t you here?) by Aida Šehović, was hosted in Boston by the New England Friends of Bosnia and Herzegovina . The installation commemorated the fall of Srebrenica to Bosnian Serb forces, and the killing of 8,372 Bosniaks, mostly men and boys, in the days that followed. It draws on what might be the foundation of Bosnian community-building, a shared cup of coffee. As none other than Dragan Obrenović, who commanded forces that perpetrated the genocide at Srebrenica, stated when he plead guilty for crimes at Srebrenica before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia:

Surrounded with horrors, we got used to them and went on living like that. Among those horrors, things happened that were done by people who knew each other, people who, until yesterday, had lived almost as family members together. In Bosnia, a neighbour means more than a relative. In Bosnia, having coffee with your neighbour is a ritual, and this is what we trampled on and forgot. We lost ourselves in hatred and brutality. And in this vortex of terrible misfortune and horror, the horror of Srebrenica happened. Dragan Obrenović, Guilty Plea Statement, 30 October 2003.

The Srebrenica memorial installation forms over the space of several hours, beginning with coffee poured into one of the small porcelain cups, fildžani, in which it is typically served across the former Yugoslavia. The installation grows over the course of the day, one cup for each person killed at Srebrenica, placed into an ever-widening circle, and filled with coffee. Volunteers engage the passing public about what happened in July 1995, and invite them to join the project by placing a cup and filling it with coffee. The mood is not somber, but it is serious and prompts a conversation amongst strangers. The installation does not engage in the historical or political intricacies, or to permanently re-fashion Srebrenica unto a public landscape. It is modest, and the more moving for being so. It grows and takes shape in relation to the unexpected conversations, in this case, between a community of Bosnians displaced by war and violence with their new communities in Boston.

The elegant simplicity of “Što Te Nema?” provides a helpful entry point for thinking about debates regarding the role and purpose of public memory projects, recently invigorated in response to David Rieff’s recently published In Praise of Forgetting. These memory projects, I argue, are best understood as situated between personal memory of survivors, on one hand, and official narratives of mass violence, on the other—reducible to neither.

In the context of societies emerging from periods of systemic violence, there is a tension between the memories of those who directly suffered and bore the brunt of brutality – the sharpest cut of political experiences with widespread impact – and the larger society, regardless of how many people supported or were committed opponents of the authorities behind violence. Personal wounds, even if they heal, are unseemly and difficult to integrate. There is nothing redemptive in the fog of trauma that follows, the permanency of lost loved ones, or the shattered relationship with society that somehow never manages to totally forget that men are capable of the worst acts imaginable. For those who have suffered, there is no question of whether or not remember, memory is simply there. The questions are how is it there, how does individual memory relate to public memory (or truth-telling) projects, and from there to political agendas?

Individual memories of violence, as opposed to history, form an irrational discourse, inherently subjective and unruly.[i] And as such, can form the basis of a public memory-work that is a powerful force for unraveling, or at least challenging, narratives that subordinate the experience of violence to the task of state-building. This remains true even if the new state appropriates the story of suffering into its rationalizing discourse, because to do so authorities must tame the memory and make it serve their ends, a task for which memory of violence is inherently ill-suited.

For many Srebrenica survivors, for instance, personal memory is guarded by the final goodbye, when Bosnian Serb soldiers forced loved ones to separate, most of those of taken away would never be seen again. Zumra Shekhomerović, whose husband was killed by Bosnian Serb soldiers, describes this moment:

His hand was on my shoulder, trembling, . . . somewhere deep inside me it still trembles . . . . It seems to me that every moment I feel it here on my left shoulder and that hot whisper of his that was reaching my ear as he told me not to worry that everything will be all right. [He said] to tell, when I come to Tuzla [Bosnia], to tell my son that he sends his warmest regards and to tell him to listen to me. And when I talk to my daughter, who is in Slovenia, by phone to tell her that her daddy has been missing her very much and that he cannot wait until the moment he will see her . . . . from Srebrenica: A Cry from the Grave

A soft tremor and hot whisper goodbye, of final words from a father to his children has nothing to do with the discourse of truth or state-building; it exists in another language spoken only in the chasm of loss. It does not find redemption or resolution.

How would one ever reconcile that final goodbye with the discourse of rights-holding individuals, civic trust, rule of law and reconciliation, constructed through truth-telling or memorialization projects? These are not the same forms of communication, not in any language. Living in the wake of personal loss, crafting public memory projects, and state building are fundamentally different tasks. This does not by any means install a hierarchy between them, but issues warning flares to all those who think that one can serve the others, for whatever purpose. One might ask, what if public engagement with memory-work produced no politically defined outcomes? What if it fostered a small space on the public sphere where memory of deep pain was simply honored—without any connection to a political program? Would this be a waste of time, and if so, whose time?

To ask whether “truth-telling” is good or bad for what are often referred to as transitional states, and which forms of memory politics are correct and which forms are abuses suggests that one has already exited the realm of memorialization and entered that of political narrative. It is foolish to denigrate the transition, politics and state-building are necessary. The point here, however, is that the particular forms of political and state-building projects should not be confused with an ethical imperative made impregnable by virtue of the suffering that inspires this transition. This is a point David Rieff has argued in his recent book and online essays (here and here). Arguing against Rieff’s position, on the side of the power of truth-telling for building more just societies is Pablo de Grieff, who draws attention to the imperfect, but vital contributions of a rights-based accounting of violence to the emergence of rights-respecting states:

The aim is not to mechanically reproduce the past. In fact, it is just the opposite, to fill the space which will be filled in any case by some account of the past, deliberately produced or not but more often than not one-sided and incomplete, with accounts that make it more difficult to instrumentalize the past in a way that increases, not decreases, the likelihood of repetition.[ii]

Of course de Grieff is correct in some cases and Rieff in others. In the end, I am deeply agnostic about whether memorialization and truth-telling promote rights-respecting states or grievance fueled tyranny; because in some ways and in some places both sides are right. My point in this short essay is not to agree or disagree with either side of this debate. Rather, I want to lightly probe the point of intersection between the functioning of memory and public memorial projects, as a prior endeavor before we turn to policy matters (like civic trust and rule of law—reconciliation is something different). This trio of ideas– memory, memorial or truth-telling projects, and policy outcomes—complicate and unsettle each other. They should not be imagined as overlapping concepts or practices. There is a collective component of memory, if only at minimum because making sense of even personal memories is a task done in relation to social meaning. There may not be collective memory, as Rieff often argues and de Grieff agrees, but memory is filtered through a web of meaning that is collectively constructed, with different stories gaining or losing significance in relation to what is heard and how it is received. Hence the work of addressing memory of violence is collective, even if it the trauma at its heart—what I described above as the sharpest cut — cannot be circumscribed by a collective narrative.

The most powerful and difficult point at which memory penetrates into social discourses is not where it is subsumed into a new ethical or political narrative, but how long a society can listen and still resist the urge to subsume memory to politics. This is why I wonder if truth-telling and memorial projects should not be understood as producing transitions to more just political dispensations, but rather, if the effort to undertake such practices is an attribute of societies that are genuinely embarking on such a transition.[iii] The task then for supporters of transition is encourage the forces that demonstrate this attribute, rather than to be deterministic about its modes of enactment or incorporation into political regimes, something the field of transitional justice recognizes, but has not fully integrated into its practices. If, for no other reason, than because donors rarely support projects that cannot claim, however speculatively, to be valuable because they have no immediate use value.

Memory is not policy. Nor are memory projects and public memorialization. To ask either to transform into policy is a form of forgetting. Memory is much quieter, simpler and, in political terms, often useless. And so it should be, but that in no way reduces its power. The place of memory projects is to intervene, interrupt and surprise, not to rebuild an edifice.

The power of memorialization stems from this ethics of simplicity and interruption, not righteousness. In this I agree entirely with Rieff. Memory does not and cannot provide a map for the future. The potential for harm that Rieff discusses is not in memory projects per se, it is when they, their advocates or usurpers become boastful about how memory instructs.Memory is not the opposite of forgetting, these two ideas are, as many others have also noted, twins. Rather memory unravels and intervenes, it destabilizes; so its opposite is institutionalized narrative. Memory is most powerful when it makes little sense in relation to the ways we try to tame it, be that for reactionary or liberal narratives. This also means one must part ways with memory at some point, switch to another language once lesson learning and meaning extraction become the goals. This work is overtly and rightly political, and must stake its claims on those grounds.

Even at a slight distance from the Srebrenica installation in Boston, it is almost impossible to discern what is happening. What work is being done here, around the fragile cups, spilt coffee, and an imperfect circle on the ground? You cannot know what this is until you join the conversation and are invited to participate. Tomorrow, there will be no trace of this installation, but for one day it claims public space and creates an impromptu community of those who are willing to listen to the story of what happened in Srebrenica in July 1995.

NOTES:

[i] I do not intend this to read in psychoanalytic terms, as, for instance, what Lacan refers to as the Real, which is (to put it crassly) a more elemental exposure to that which cannot be subsumed into cognitive experience. Such discourse is relevant here, but is not my focus. I simply refer to memory as an individual’s story or accounting of their personal experiences of violence.

[iii] This is a point further suggested by cross-case studies of transitional justice, which demonstrate that there is no formulaic outcome produced by various mechanisms, but rather that the strongest outcomes result when multiple forms, which can include amnesties, are deployed. This suggests that a society willing to engage the questions of post-conflict justice and to attempt to grapple with the challenges rather than simply implement a transitional justice tool are those best positioned to achieve democratic gains.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/27/on-memory-coffee-and-an-imperfect-circle/feed/1Peace, Security and More Peacehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/25/peace-security-and-more-peace/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/25/peace-security-and-more-peace/#respondMon, 25 Jul 2016 15:53:55 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3375By Mulugeta Gebrehiwot and Alex de Waal. Published by the Guardian on Thursday, July 21, 2016.

The African Union thrives or fails according to how successful it is in preventing and resolving conflict. Over the past 14 years, since its foundational meeting in Durban, South Africa, the AU has constructed an impressive [...]]]>

By Mulugeta Gebrehiwot and Alex de Waal. Published by the Guardian on Thursday, July 21, 2016.

The African Union thrives or fails according to how successful it is in preventing and resolving conflict. Over the past 14 years, since its foundational meeting in Durban, South Africa, the AU has constructed an impressive peace and security architecture. It has presided over an impressive decline in armed conflicts and military coups.

Last year, the commissioner for peace and security asked us to review peace efforts in Africa with a view to informing AU policies. Our report is published on Thursday. The next six months, as the AU chooses a new chair for its commission, are a chance to examine the state of peace and security in Africa – and, more important, the direction in which the AU can steer the continent.

The AU has built a solid foundation and adopted far-reaching principles. Africa routinely rejects unconstitutional changes in government, upholds the principle of “non-indifference” – meaning countries are required to intervene when mass atrocities are committed against civilians – and supports more inclusive peace processes. The AU has set up the peace and security council, high-level panels for conflict resolution, and the African standby force for supporting peace operations.

The AU’s successes have come about through political and diplomatic approaches. While the AU also mounts military operations, these are expensive and, while sometimes necessary, aren’t consistently successful.

Worryingly, Africa’s peace and security record has shifted in the wrong direction over the past five years. Old patterns of conflict and authoritarianism have recurred and new threats have emerged.

The biggest task for the new commission chair is how to put Africa back on its track towards fewer armed conflicts. Experience shows that this is best done through prevention and mediation.

Inter-state rivalries are another important and under-acknowledged trigger for conflict. The AU has devoted much attention to resolving them and creating a common approach among “frontline states”. This is never simple, and one challenge is getting the right division of labour between the AU and regional economic communities, which have the advantage of being nearby, but are not always impartial.

Significant too is violent extremism and the spillover of crises from the Arab world. The Sahara-Sahel region, and increasingly west Africa and the Horn of Africa, are affected by the turmoil in the Middle East, including both the spread of militant extremism and rivalries among Middle East nations. Africa needs a new mechanism for political partnership in the shared spaces of north Africa, the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, so that African voices are heard and the agenda is not set entirely by others.

The AU has massively expanded its peace support operations, which now rival the UN’s in size and ambition. Yet the AU’s peacekeeping capabilities need to be fit for purpose. We propose two different roles for the African standby force: one should be a light footprint deployment aimed at preventing conflict, and the other a fully combat-capable peace enforcement operation. These demand very different command and control systems – the first could be run by the AU commission, but countries that contribute troops will insist on keeping their national command systems.

At a recent summit, the AU’s high representative for the African peace fund, Donald Kaberuka, presented his report. It proposes that if African countries can cover 25% of the cost of AU peace operations, the UN will cover the remaining 75% from its member states’ regular contributions for peacekeeping. That’s an important proposal: AU peace operations must be put on a firmer financial footing. The AU needs to assure that African states pay their portion of the bill as there can be no political ownership without financial responsibility. But it would be futile to spend money on military missions while shortchanging the AU’s political instruments – prevention and mediation should be the top funding priorities.

This is a tough agenda and demands a vigorous commission chair, someone prepared to use the AU’s tools to their limits and bend them to grapple with new challenges. The AU has six months of transition to its new leadership: it should use this time to set its strategic priorities for peace and security, and ensure that its next chair can deliver.

Mulugeta Gebrehiwot is director of the African peace missions programme at theWorld Peace Foundation and Alex de Waal is the foundation’s executive director

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/25/peace-security-and-more-peace/feed/0Politics of Fear in South Sudanhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/23/politics-of-fear-in-south-sudan/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/23/politics-of-fear-in-south-sudan/#commentsSat, 23 Jul 2016 12:29:16 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3390Recommended reading from Open Democracy, Daniel Akech Thiong’s essay, “The politics of fear in South Sudan,” published July 22, 2016.

The South Sudanese political landscape has become frighteningly unpredictable. It is nearly impossible to address one crisis without another more serious one cropping up.

The political risks were low while the economy boomed, but became high [...]]]>

The South Sudanese political landscape has become frighteningly unpredictable. It is nearly impossible to address one crisis without another more serious one cropping up.

The political risks were low while the economy boomed, but became high once it began to crash under the weight of a trinity of shocks to the polity: South Sudan’s suicidal decision to shutdown its oil production over a row with neighboring Sudan in 2012, global crumbling of crude oil prices, and the civil war that broke out in December 2013.

The signs of a conflict erupting and the build-up of tensions, marked by a sequence of revenge killings, were visible to the coalition government in Juba during the first week of July 2016, yet the government was unable to prevent them. Some analysts have said this failure is due to a lack of command and control from top leadership.

However, the best way to explain this failure is by exposing how fraudulent an enterprise the government has become, selling false promises and propagating fear. Self-preservation and remaining in a warmongering mindset are top priorities. Tribalism is key to this success but profoundly damaging.

For the opposition, fighting for equitable representation in the elite club is a key motivator in the conflict. But the rebel leadership, like the government, also propagates fear to mobilize fighters.

Peace accords only benefit members of this elite club. Power-sharing peace accords that have been signed by warring parties only last as long as there is enough money in the public treasury. Once the country’s resource envelope has been exhausted, the elite club begins to disintegrate, sending its members to embark on mobilizing innocent crowds to fight either for those elbowed out – to regain their membership – or to maintain the positions of those who are already in the club and feel threatened. Innocent people end up fighting for the interests of this elite club, and the international community labors to deal with these elite-centric pacts in accordance with resource realities.

These government agents with access to resources and the ability to decide how they are allocated form this minority club of elites. They are undoubtedly dominated by members of the Dinka ethnic group.

Increasing suspicions

This cycle has many effects on community relations. One of the particular dangers is the demonization of the Dinka collectively because of the behavior of a handful of their leaders.

Two young men discussing the topic of an unusual increase in the number of beggars on the streets of Juba, were overheard in a restaurant. The non-Dinka challenged his Dinka friend: “If you people beg now while you are in leadership, what will become of you when you are not in power?” His friend firmly rebuffed the argument: “the fact that we are begging in such alarming numbers is proof that those in power have nothing to do with their tribes.”

It is the same conclusion a non-Dinka priest has reached. While driving to church, he stopped at the Mobil roundabout in Juba. A woman and two children approached his car asking for help. The priest rolled down his window and chatted a little with each of them and gave them a little something. While preaching, the non-Dinka priest told his congregation that some had been under the impression that the government was beneficial to the Dinka and oppressive to non-Dinka, but the majority of people begging on the streets of Juba were Dinka. He concluded that the government had oppressed all vulnerable citizens, regardless of their tribes.

While a good number of Dinka are suffering the humiliation of having been reduced to beggars as a consequence of inadequate political and economic policies, a good number of them are nevertheless still supportive of the leadership.

Distortion of cultural logic

Culturally, a Dinka man would die protecting neighbors’ cows from outside raiders, but the logic is implicitly utilitarian: the man could potentially receive the cows as a bride price for his daughter or sister or female relative. This was the way in which a Dinka man could speak of ‘our cattle camp’ even if he himself had not a single cow.

‘Our government’ simply doesn’t exist, given the way most governments in Africa tend to be nothing more than extractive entities benefiting only the minority that negotiates the sharing of resources among its members.

An errant chief, however, might be punished for this distortion, whereas a failed government agent would not. A young Dinka man locked into heated exchange with a group of elders from his clan about the state of affairs in the country ,challenged them by asking: “suppose one of you is a village chief and there has been a conflict with the people and one sub-clan ran away and when asked to return, they said that they feared for their safety from the chief. Would you not feel ashamed that you have let them down?”

Interestingly, while the elders agreed that such a chief should resign immediately, as he had lost the trust and legitimacy to continue ruling over his people, they could not pass the same judgment on their fellow Dinka – the President of South Sudan.

This is a country where a considerable number of citizens are crammed into UN protection camps out of fear of their own government.

What is at the root of the fear?

Some powerful actors have their own leadership ambitions which they feel can only be achieved by stirring up violent crises, so as to shake up the system and eliminate political rivals.

For instance, a group of political elite from the Dinka emerged under the name of Jieng Council of Elders. They used fear to manipulate the president and radicalize a host of young Dinka men who had been recruited to wage a propaganda war.

The hatred is sold to the president as a sign of love for him. But at the root of it, the propagation of fear is a tool for settling internal competition among the political and military elite of Dinka. The difference between President Salva Kiir and the Jieng Council of Elders, who purportedly support him, is that the president would rather share power with his archrivals than with those who harm him so as not to lose his position at the apex.

The hardliners, however, are willing to continue pushing for war to get rid of the opposition even if this would mean the president losing power or the fate of the country being decided by external powers, as it seems to be now.

Fear limits the options of the suffering masses who are categorized into their ethnic cells. They are presented with hard choices: either you support the leadership on a tribal basis or face extermination once the other side wins the contest for power.

The state is already bankrupt and thereby unable to deliver services and can only rely on tactics of self-preservation, using fear to forcefully drive the masses to support its agenda.

Conclusion

While there is sufficient external pressure urging the principal actors to do the right thing, there is nearly zero internal pressure urging them to correct themselves.

The few voices that weren’t scared into silence have been physically threatened and thrown into jail. A deep-seated fear drives the remaining vast majority to fight to secure or maintain slots for their sons in the elite club despite the fact that they do not reap any benefits.

The elite packages this rivalry as beneficial for the wider group, however, it only serves their own interests of self-preservation with complete disregard for the well-being of people.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/23/politics-of-fear-in-south-sudan/feed/2Launch of “African Politics, African Peace”https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/22/launch-of-african-politics-african-peace/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/22/launch-of-african-politics-african-peace/#respondFri, 22 Jul 2016 04:29:09 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3377On Thursday, July 21, 2016, the African Union and World Peace Foundation jointly hosted a launch event in Addis Ababa for the report, African Politics, African Peace, which was requested by the AU and produced by the WPF. Among the speakers were WPF Executive Director Alex de Waal; AU Commissioner for Peace [...]]]>On Thursday, July 21, 2016, the African Union and World Peace Foundation jointly hosted a launch event in Addis Ababa for the report, African Politics, African Peace, which was requested by the AU and produced by the WPF. Among the speakers were WPF Executive Director Alex de Waal; AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, Ambassador Smail Chergui; WPF African Peace Missions program director Mulugeta Gebrehiwot; and AU analyst, Solomon Dersso.

Alex de Waal opened the evening by welcoming Amb. Chergui to the podium, and congratulating him on the historic decision taken by African political leaders at the just concluded AU Summit to impose a sustainable mode of financing the core functions of the AU. WPF African Peace Missions program director, Mulugeta Gebrehiwot then presented Amb. Chergui with the Report.

In his remarks, Amb Chergui thanked the WPF for the report and noted that it offered an opportunity to look at the broader picture beyond the day to day work of managing crises, to see that in many respects, the bug picture is encouraging. The African Union has made a major impact on the reduction in coup d’états and improving efforts to mediate conflicts. However, he also noted that conflicts are rising today in Africa, citing the pressing case of South Sudan as example.

Amb. Chergui was delighted that the Report offered such a comprehensive and detailed review of AU peace missions. Three key findings stood out to him. First, was the position of the AU at the center of peace and security efforts in Africa. Second, he noted the Report’s findings that women make an enormously positive impact on peace missions, as mediators and peacekeepers. He noted that female peacekeepers are important not only through their ability to engage with communities, but also their involvement in such peace missions correlates with reductions in sexual exploitation and other harms to women in the local community. Third, he welcomed and emphasized the particular role of a politics of peace in Africa.

Mulugeta Gebrehiwot outlined the core findings and recommendations of the Report. He noted that the report is the most extensive review of the African Union’s peace missions ever conducted. It is based on detailed case studies and cross-cutting research, and draws on consultations with leading experts, peacekeepers, and mediators. It covers African peace and security norms and mechanisms, including conflict prevention, conflict mediation, political missions and the spectrum of military peace operations.

The research covered peace support operations (PSOs) include peacekeeping operations, stabilization/enforcement missions, mediation and political missions. It delved into case studiesand cross cutting issues, such as trends in African conflicts; trends in African mediation; the process of mandating PSOs; prevention of mass atrocities and protection of civilians; gender issues as related to PSOs; and security sector reform. Further, it addressed key architectural issues: the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA); the AU Peace and Security Council, and Unconstitutional Changes in Government; panels of experts; the African Standby Force and doctrinal issues. The report also made extensive use of consultations with African and international experts, force commanders and Troop Contributing Countries.

This research suggests that Africa is at a turning point. Significant progress has been made since the AU was founded in 2002, but there are troubling trends that require new focus. Conflict is again rising in Africa. In the decade after the African Union was founded in 2000, Africa’s concerted efforts helped reduce the level of armed conflict to an all-time low. But today conflicts are again increasing. The reasons include weak democracy, contested government transitions, inter-state contestation, and violent extremism. There is a risk of abandoning the very mechanisms, principles and practices that founded the AU and produced real gains for peace. Today’s emergent emphasis on hard-security approaches to peace and security challenges results in AU responses that are reactive to crisis situations, overly dependent on military interventions, and threaten to embroil the organization in unwinnable armed conflicts. Further, a predominantly militarized response to crises is financially unsustainable.

What is the answer?: The Primacy of the Political. The AU needs to focus its efforts in the areas where it has comparative strength.

The AU should more fully implement its principles and norms and practices of collective security unique to the continent if it wishes to retain ownership of Africa’s peacebuilding agenda.

These principles include:

‘Non-indifference’: the right to intervene in the case of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes;

Constitutional democracy and rejection of unconstitutional changes in government

Inclusivity in peace processes;

Implementation of existing norms and principles across the continent.

The AU possesses unique peace making capacity; it should expand its investments in the area of conflict prevention and mediation. Cross-case research finds that African-led mediation with international support is the most effective form of peacemaking. AU mechanisms such as the Peace and Security Council and High-Level Panels are valuable mechanisms and should be invested in. When the AU engages with neighboring states, it has the ability to overcome divisions and rivalries among those states and instead promote common involvement in peace making. The AU should prioritize funding for its core activities and peace making efforts rather than expensive military operations, and should understand that there can be no ownership without financial responsibility.

The AU structures that form the APSA are working, but can be enhanced to better position the AU to engage with regional and international actors. Hence, it recommends an APSA Plus to include:

Stronger liaison with the UN

Shared financing responsibility as proposed by the AU and US, and recently endorsed by the AU summit;

A stronger mechanism for coordination between the AU and the Regional Economic Communities, so that all play to their strengths

New mechanisms for engagement with trans-regional and extra-regional organizations (Arab League, GCC, EU etc.) in the ‘shared spaces’ of the Red Sea and Mediterranean

Further, the Report recommends strengthening the AU’s political leadership of peace support operations.

The full spectrum of peace support operations is required but the AU’s role should be focused;

Separating the different kinds of operation conducted by the African Standby Force, with a focus on preventative deployments and on ‘coalitions of the willing’ for robust stabilization and enforcement missions;

Guiding the increasing role of ‘new’ Troup Contributing Countries, that become engaged in Peace Support Operations in neighboring countries.

Ensuring that mandates and concepts of operations are guided by the challenges of the situation, scaling back on ambitious and complex ‘Christmas Tree’ mandates.

Gebrehiwot concluded with one of the Report’s key insights: as the AU develops more capacities, it should not lose sight of the fact that Africa’s proven advantage is in the politics of conflict prevention and mediation.

Solomon Dersso then discussed how this report differs from others, many of which focus on the instruments of peace and security. “African Politics, African Peace” dedicates considerable space to the primacy of the political as an expression of the underlying philosophy of African peace and security. This approach draws attention to the requirement that peace be sought clearly in relation to the fundamentals of a philosophy of peace that is cornerstone of the AU’s contributions.

At heart, he argued, the primacy of the political must be taken as an intellectual exercise: defining the problems correctly so that they can best be resolved. With this in mind, we can better understand the meaning of the phrase “African solutions to African problems”, which should not be taken as a promise that the AU would resolve all problems on the continent. Rather, Dersso continued, it represents an exercise in defining the nature of problems and articulating the norms and principles that guide policy responses. Foregrounding response within the political means the design and approach of all peacemaking efforts, even military interventions, are guided by this core philosophical approach to peace and security challenges.

The Report also details the achievements of the AU, as well as gaps. Among these gaps is the extra-African dimensions of some conflicts: the AU needs a “neighborhood policy” as well as policies internal to the African continent. Dersso emphasized the need for North Africa and the Horn Africa, in particular, to recommit to forging collective positions and protect the shared spaces where the AU’s interests engage with other regional actors, especially the Mediterranean and Red Sea-Gulf of Aden.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/22/launch-of-african-politics-african-peace/feed/0New Report Outlines a “Political Agenda for Peace” in Africahttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/21/new-report-outlines-a-political-agenda-for-peace-in-africa/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/21/new-report-outlines-a-political-agenda-for-peace-in-africa/#respondThu, 21 Jul 2016 17:49:24 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3371Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – July 21,2016 – The World Peace Foundation has outlined a bold new vision for the African Union to prevent and resolve armed conflicts. In an independent new report titled “African Politics, African Peace” the foundation argues that the African Union should reinvest in the politics of conflict prevention and mediation [...]]]>Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – July 21,2016 – The World Peace Foundation has outlined a bold new vision for the African Union to prevent and resolve armed conflicts. In an independent new report titled “African Politics, African Peace” the foundation argues that the African Union should reinvest in the politics of conflict prevention and mediation and ensure that all military peace support operations are designed with clear political leadership.

The report comes at a critical moment for African peace efforts and the development of the African Union. After the African Union was founded in 2000, the level of armed conflict in Africa dropped to an all-time low. The African Union’s ambitious principles for peace and democracy, and its proactive political initiatives, contributed to this. But today conflicts are again increasing – due to conflicted government transitions, inter-state rivalries, and violent extremism.

Within this context, the report describes how the African Union has shifted to a more reactive posture – overly dependent on outside military interventions that threaten to embroil the organization in unwinnable armed conflicts. In light of this reality, the World Peace Foundation asserts that the African Union should return to its founding principles of collective security, constitutional democracy, obligation to prevent mass atrocities, and inclusivity in peace processes.

“Conflict is again rising in Africa, and the continent is a turning point,” said Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation. “The African Union can either deepen its commitment to the principles of collective security that led to the creation of the African Union, or it can allow its burgeoning capacities to be captured by outside agendas. With this report, we argue that the African Union should return to its roots – putting politics first and military second.”

“The African Union is uniquely positioned to advance peace and security in Africa,” said Mulugeta Gebrehiwot, Director of the World Peace Foundation’s program on African peace missions. “Its stated aim of building an African peace and security architecture to ‘to silence the guns’ assumes a new urgency – in light of the challenges that are documented in this report. The African Union has developed the principles and instruments it needs. Today, our crucial task is implementation—fulfilling the promise.”

In order to strengthen the partnership between the African Union and the United Nations, “African Politics, African Peace” complements the findings and recommendations of the 2015 UN High Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) report. In particular, it expands on the agenda of “the primacy of the political” with concrete action steps, such as:

Strengthen the core instruments of the AU Peace and Security Council and Peace and Security Department.

Integrate the African Peace and Security Architecture with better coordination between the AU, the United Nations, Africa’s Regional Economic Communities, and regional organizations for Europe and the Arab countries.

Create new mechanisms for addressing the security crises of Africa’s “shared spaces”—the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, such as a ‘Red Sea Forum’.

Establish High-Level Panels and Expert Committees as preventative mechanisms for situations at the greatest risk of conflict.

Issue clear guidance prioritizing the protection of civilians for all AU peace missions; and create and enforce an African Union Zero Tolerance for Sexual Exploitation and Abuse policy.

Ensure that the core activities of the AU Commission and political missions are fully financed.

“African Politics, African Peace” is the most extensive review of the African Union’s peace missions ever conducted. It is based on detailed case studies of countries including Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Libya, Somalia and South Sudan, and cross-cutting research and draws on consultations with leading experts, peacekeepers, and mediators.

This seminal report advances the World Peace Foundation’s mission to educate the world about the waste and destructiveness of war and promote international peace.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/21/new-report-outlines-a-political-agenda-for-peace-in-africa/feed/0South Sudan’s corrupt elite have driven a debt-free and oil-rich country to ruinhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/15/conflict-south-sudans-corrupt-elite-have-driven-a-debt-free-and-oil-rich-country-to-ruin/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/15/conflict-south-sudans-corrupt-elite-have-driven-a-debt-free-and-oil-rich-country-to-ruin/#commentsFri, 15 Jul 2016 14:37:09 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3367Originally published on July 15, 2016 by the International Business Times.

South Sudan gained independence in 2011 as a middle-income country. It was debt-free and enjoyed per capita spending many times greater than any of its East African neighbours. But 98% of government revenue was from oil, and therein lay the seeds of disaster.

The explanation of South Sudan’s precipitous collapse is that the elite − and especially the army − were living beyond their means. Five years ago, the country was selling 300,000 barrels of oil per day at about $100 a barrel. Today’s production is barely half of that, and once it pays pipeline tariffs plus interest on debts to the oil companies, the government gets almost nothing.

This collapse started early: just six months after independence, in January 2012, the government shut down its entire oil production in a dispute with (northern) Sudan over pipeline charges, which led to a brief border war three months later. When oil production re-started in mid-2013, the country was deep in an economic crisis from which it has not recovered.

At independence, more than half of the total budget was spent on the army, with salaries and allowances for the bloated military as much as 80% of that bill. The army was essentially a constellation of ethnic militias, each loyal to its particular commander-cum-paymaster. It was exempt from austerity measures imposed after the oil shutdown − not because it was needed for national defence, but because the 700 generals had sufficient clout to hold President Salva Kiir to ransom, with ill-concealed threats should they not be paid.

President Kiir’s strategy for remaining on top of his diverse, fractious and quarrelsome generals, and other members of a kleptocratic elite, was a ‘big tent’ policy: he paid them all off by allowing them to steal from state coffers. Vast sums of oil money disappeared into private pockets, or were recycled lower down the food chain into patronage payoffs.

When the funds dried up, Kiir could no longer manage political rivalries, and couldn’t hold off the challenge of his own vice president, Riek Machar, for leadership of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), which automatically translates into the presidency of the country. And when the crisis erupted in December 2013, the army split along ethnic lines.

After nearly two years of fighting and atrocities against the civilian population, the international community arm-twisted President Kiir and his rival Machar, now heading the SPLM-in-opposition, into signing a peace deal. The basic flaw of this agreement was that it returned the political situation to the status quo ante just before the outbreak of fighting. It did not solve the political crisis or resolve the question of who should lead the SPLM, merely postponing the date of elections to 2018.

It did not reconcile the opposing factions or create a depoliticised, professional army. Instead it placed the security of the capital city Juba jointly in the hands of the two deeply hostile forces. Neither did the peace deal offer any remedy for the economic crisis: inflation reaching 300%, the value of the South Sudanese pound dropping to a tenth of its prior value, civil servants’ salaries remaining unpaid for months.

The promise of the August 2015 deal was a share-out of wealth and power among the elites. Underpinning it was the idea that President Kiir could return to his inclusive ‘big tent’ policy, bring Machar back as First Vice President, and keep the elites happy through letting them enrich themselves from the oil funds. Unfortunately the money just wasn’t there. And as South Sudan went over the macroeconomic cliff, a crisis of governability loomed. When soldiers are unpaid, or when the value of a month’s salary dwindles to a level that it can only feed a family for a day or two, unrest is inevitable. It is only a matter of time before a violent incident escalates.

Which is precisely what happened on 8 July, when Machar’s bodyguards killed five soldiers. The army’s chief of staff, General Paul Malong, who last year advocated pressing home the military advantage over the rebels rather than signing a peace deal, took the opportunity of this clash to deploy tanks and helicopter gunships to try to eliminate the SPLM-in-opposition troops stationed in the capital. South Sudan went back to war.

The smaller-scale symptoms of the crisis are just as alarming as the organised fighting. On every road, there are now checkpoints where soldiers extract bribes and other payments. Formerly mixed towns have become clusters of ethnic enclaves, each with its own community defence unit. One by one, the country’s independent newspapers are closing down and seven journalists were killed last year, plus another reporter this month. Millions depend on food aid.

South Sudan’s political system may be too deformed to be reformed. As presently constituted, it can only function either with a well-financed big man or a ruthless enforcer at the top. Kiir cannot expect any international donor to stump up the cash needed to run a political system based on graft and cronyism, and neither will investors have the confidence to pour money into the oil industry. And the country is too diverse and its communities too well armed for an old-style dictatorship to be possible, even if it were a morally acceptable option.

The South Sudanese ambassador to the United Nations, Akuei Bona Malwal, described the violence as part of his country’s ‘learning curve.’ It’s his job to put a brave face on disaster. But the learning curve surely needs to be that South Sudanese citizens can no longer afford a political elite whose greed, ambition and bellicosity have driven their country to ruin.

The long-suffering people of South Sudan need to have their own voices heard directly in the next peace process, so that they can find ways to bend that curve towards peace.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/15/conflict-south-sudans-corrupt-elite-have-driven-a-debt-free-and-oil-rich-country-to-ruin/feed/1The African Union can and must intervene to prevent atrocities in South Sudanhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/13/the-african-union-can-and-must-intervene-to-prevent-atrocities-in-south-sudan/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/13/the-african-union-can-and-must-intervene-to-prevent-atrocities-in-south-sudan/#respondWed, 13 Jul 2016 17:44:00 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3365Originally published on African Arguments, July 13, 2016. By Mulugeta Gebrehiwot Berhe and Alex de Waal.

The challenge facing the African Heads of State and Government as they meet in Kigali this week is not whether but howto act in South Sudan.

When the security arrangements of South Sudan’s fragile peace agreement collapsed last week, fighting returned and attacks on civilians and UN peacekeepers ensued. This presents an enormous and difficult challenge, but one to which the African Union (AU) must respond and can respond – if the necessary political decisions are taken.

In August of last year, the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan was pressed on a reluctant President Salva Kiir and his rival First Vice-President Riek Machar. Its fatal flaw, however, was that it restored South Sudan to precisely the same state of political rivalry between armed contenders that had existed before the war erupted in December 2013 – and which was the cause of that war.

Under the terms of the pact, the troops of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) were joined in the capital Juba by those of the SPLA-In-Opposition despite the fact that the two remained unreconciled and deeply distrustful of each other. It was an explosion waiting to happen.

Last week it did happen, and since last Friday there has been intense fighting between the rival factions, including attacks on civilians in towns and cities throughout the country. Government forces have shelled the Protection of Civilians sites within UN bases, probably because they suspect opposition fighters are taking refuge there. Tens of thousands of civilians have fled to churches, UN bases and anywhere they hope they can find safety, joining the 200,000 or so driven from their homes in the previous two and a half years. And South Sudanese soldiers have attacked peacekeepers, leading to the deaths of two Chinese soldiers serving under the UN flag.

Non-indifference

On 10 July, the UN Security Council called for African countries to prepare additional troops for deployment in South Sudan, should they be required. The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Council of Ministers met the following day and called for an African intervention brigade with a mandate to secure Juba and also called for the revision of the UN Mission in the Republic of South Sudan’s (UNMISS) mandate. The AU Peace and Security Council also met and put the crisis at the top of the agenda for the forthcoming African summit meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, later this week.

The site of this upcoming summit is deeply symbolic. 22 years ago, genocide was perpetrated in Rwanda, and UN troops abandoned the country, including letting thousands of trapped civilians face certain death at the hands of the murderous Interahamwe militia. This failure sparked transformative changes in how African nations would envision their role and empower themselves to act in the name of collective security, culminating in the creation of the African Union in 2002.

In Article 4(h) of its Constitutive Act, African leaders endowed the AU with the right to intervene in a country in the case of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes – a principle known as ‘non-indifference’. According to the AU Commission of Investigation into South Sudan, chaired by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and whose report was released in October 2015, crimes against humanity and war crimes were committed in South Sudan by both warring parties in the conflict that broke out in December 2013. There is every reason to fear the renewed conflict is already resulting in similar crimes.

The African Peace and Security Architecture, established painstakingly over the last 14 years, includes an intervention mechanism – the African Standby Force – for precisely the kind of urgent peace support operation needed in South Sudan today. And at the last AU summit in January, the Standby Force was declared operational.

Furthermore, the African Union has a particular responsibility in South Sudan. In line with the August peace agreement, the AU is responsible for the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission, chaired by former Botswanan President Festus Mogae. It is clear that, despite his efforts, the current formula that entrusts the country’s political leaders with implementation of the agreement and the security of South Sudan’s citizens is no longer viable.

Protection and justice

There should of course be no illusions that the African intervention brigade will have an easy task. South Sudan is heavily armed and lawless. Key military actors do not want to see a peaceful settlement, and an African intervention force will need to enter South Sudan prepared to face down the warmongers.

Salva Kiir and Riek Machar are calling for calm in South Sudan despite the reality that the control they have over their supporters seems to be diminished. But if they are serious about this appeal, they should be asked formally to endorse the need for an intervention force to be deployed speedily.

Thereafter, the AU should implement its own proposals for a legal process to bring to court those – on all sides – who perpetrated war crimes and crimes against humanity against the people of South Sudan. These men should have no place in the future of a country whose people they have so grievously betrayed.

The challenge facing the African Heads of State and Government as they meet in Kigali is not whether but how to act in South Sudan. Africa’s leaders have the authority and means to act to protect the lives of tens of thousands of South Sudanese people and prevent the nation from descending into war, atrocity and famine.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/13/the-african-union-can-and-must-intervene-to-prevent-atrocities-in-south-sudan/feed/0Recommended: Clémence Pinaud on South Sudanhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/11/recommended-clemence-pinaud-on-south-sudan/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/11/recommended-clemence-pinaud-on-south-sudan/#commentsMon, 11 Jul 2016 14:39:41 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3361This essay by Clémence Pinaud was originally published by African Arguments, a WPF co-sponsored project, on July 11, 2016. It is extremely timely and worrying given the unfolding events in South Sudan, so we re-post it here for our audience.

As heavy fighting has erupted in the capital Juba over the past few days, leading to hundreds of deaths and the suggestion that South Sudan is “back to war”, the question on everyone’s lips has been: who is behind the violence?

This question is all the more curious given that President Salva Kiir and First Vice-President Riek Machar − the leaders of the main rival factions in the recent civil war − were together for a press conference when one of the episodes of gunfire occurred and both seemed incapable of explaining what was happening.

One figure who was notably not there, however, was the ruling SPLA’s Chief of General Staff and former governor of Northern Bahr El Ghazal, Paul Malong − a figure that many see as the true power behind the Salva Kiir’s presidential throne.

Who is Paul Malong?

I have written about Paul Malong and Salva Kiir’s relationship in other publications, and I have come to the unsurprising conclusion, as many South Sudanese have, that Malong is the one that holds the real power.

Malong established his authority over Northern Bahr El Ghazal and the SPLA during the civil war that spanned from 1983 to 2005. In this period, Malong dominated the local war economy and used its proceeds to cement strategic allegiances. He did this through the practice of large-scale polygamy and by godfathering his supporters’ marriages.

One of those supporters was Salva Kiir, whom Malong provided financial support after Kiir fell out with then SPLA leader John Garang in 2004. One bit of anecdotal evidence that points to the supremacy Malong developed over Kiir is that he recently offered to pay for the bride wealth for Kiir’ new wife, a role traditionally taken up by a groom’s father and his close and extended kin.

In 2005, after Garang’s death, Kiir took over as Vice-President of Sudan. And in 2008, Malong was appointed state governor of his home area of Northern Bahr El Ghazal.

In the following few years, as episodes of fighting with Sudanese forces continued, Malong managed to convince Kiir of the need to create a militia that would be loyal to them both. He took advantage of the economic disarray in his home region and began recruiting and training men into this new fighting force. Some members originated from Kiir’s home state of Warrap, but the majority were from Malong’s Northern Bahr El Ghazal. Malong was trying to position himself as the first leader from Northern Bahr El Ghazal with national stature.

The militia went by the name of Mathiang Anyoor (meaning ‘brown caterpillar’ in Dinka), but was also known as Dot ku Beny or Gel-Beny (meaning ‘rescue the President’). It was financed with the help of Ambrose Riing Thiik, the chairman of the Jieng (Dinka) Council of Elders (JCE).

Lethal power and lame ducks

In December 2013, war broke out in now-independent South Sudan. It began as a political battle between President Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and Vice-President Machar, an ethnic Nuer, but much of the violence soon became codified along these ethnic lines, despite the fact that military alliances did not always follow strict lines.

As the fighting broke out, Malong, with the help of the Mathiang Anyoor, organised the massacre of thousands of ethnic Nuer in Juba. Soon after, he was soon promoted to Chief of General Staff of the SPLA, and he came to dominate the entire SPLA system of corruption. He invested embezzled money in various companies and used the resources strategically to sustain military allegiances, both within and outside the SPLA.

Since then, Malong has continued to recruit young men in what has become known as the “new” Mathiang Anyoor. And both “new” and “old” Mathiang Anyoor have been used to reinforce the SPLA in Upper Nile, Unity and Jonglei states.

But Malong’s influence goes even further. The Dinka commando units that have wrought havoc on Western and Central Equatorians since October 2015 − despite the signing of a peace agreement between Kiir and Machar in August 2015 − also reportedly answer to Malong. Many claim that Malong personally ordered helicopter gunships into Western Equatoria, and it is understood that the power he commands has led to rifts with Minister of Defence, Kuol Manyang.

Meanwhile, it was also reportedly Malong who made the decision to move Thayip Gatluak Tai Tai, one of the Bul Nuer militia’s ruthless commanders, to Wau in December 2015. Tai Tai had recently overseen a scorched earth strategy in Unity state whereby at least 600,000 civilians were uprooted, and after he was relocated, Wau became the site of extreme violence and the displacement of a further 120,000 civilians.

Over the past few days, violence has also reached Eastern Equatoria, which means that since the signing of the peace agreement in August 2015, three more states have been engulfed in the war.

In contrast to Malong, the influence of South Sudan’s official main leaders appears to be weak.

The recent fighting in Juba and Kiir’s apparent ignorance of what was happening reveals his lack of control over the SPLA. And it is increasingly clear that the president has lost a great deal of credibility and power amidst rumours of alcoholism and health issues.

If Kiir is a lame duck, the same might be said − albeit to a lesser extent − of Riek Machar. The first vice-president never seemed to control his troops and never had as much military gravitas as his peers in the so-called SPLM-In-Opposition (IO). Furthermore, he has made the grave mistake of dismissing IO’s most experienced generals in the past year.

With fighting returning to South Sudan despite an internationally-brokered peace agreement less than a year ago, the international community must also take some responsibility.

For instance, why did Juba’s demilitarisation take the form of a 25km radius around the city, essentially allowing the SPLA to encircle the capital while blocking possible escape routes for IO? And why was a stronger stance not taken regarding the fact that SPLA soldiers had clearly removed their uniforms but remained inside Juba and that the National Security body had grown exponentially over the past few months?

Indeed, the recent violence in Juba has shown how easy it is for the SPLA to breach security arrangements. And the heavy fighting on 10 July suggests that the situation might be even worse than when civil war began in December 2013. Fighting has engulfed different parts of the city such as Jebel Kujur/Rock City, Tongping, and Gudele. RPGs have been fired. Civilian houses have been shelled. Government helicopter gunships circle Juba’s skies. And UN premises have been hit.

The Juba bridge is also now closed off and Machar’s IO troops will not back down since they know there is no way out, especially with Malong’s commando units able to attack them easily from their bases in Central Equatoria. IO and SPLA forces are fighting right outside UN premises and reports are emerging that Nuer generals, who had remained allied to the SPLA but are now being targeted by SPLA soldiers, are asking for shelter inside the UN compound. Meanwhile, UN peacekeepers are also trying to defend their bases.

Will these two groups end up fighting side-by-side to defend a Protection of Civilians site that is overwhelmingly shielding Nuer civilians? If so, it would be rather uncharacteristic of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), which has repeatedly failed to fulfil its mandate of protecting civilians, most shockingly in Unity state, Western Equatoria, and more recently in Wau. In February 2016 meanwhile, UN peacekeepers simply looked on as SPLA troops attacked the Malakal Protection of Civilians compound and burnt down half the site. That episode suggests that the SPLA may not feel compelled to stop at the UNMISS gates in Juba, where over 30,000 civilians are sheltering, and could easily overrun it.

Whoever wins Juba will inflict reprisals on civilians, and reports are emerging that both sides have already started doing so. Hundreds have reportedly been killed and if things continue, the death toll this time around might be even higher than in December 2013. Again, the question is: who will protect the civilians in Juba?

Many believe that Malong is the one behind the last few days’ events and point to the fact that on 8 July, SPLA troops around J1, the presidential palace, were reinforced from both the area surrounding Juba and from Luri, a cattle camp where Mathiang Anyoor recruits stayed before the 2013 Juba massacre.

Malong did make a statement on 9 July saying the situation in Juba was under control, but this was done through an intermediary and it is not clear where the man himself is. Some suspect he is in Uganda, others in Yei, and yet others say he is in Juba itself. At any rate, it is difficult to imagine the SPLA could have decimated Machar’s bodyguards on 8 July without the top orders coming from its Chief of General Staff. Kiir has called for an inquiry into the past two days’ violence, but if previous investigations are anything to go by, the perpetrators are likely to get away.

There are rumours that Malong intends to wreak havoc and maybe even take control of Juba. He may also split from Kiir, but either way he will retain control over his Dinka militias, who are spread all over the Equatorias, as well as over some of the Bul Nuer fighters, who are based in Unity and have close ties with Khartoum. Malong will also continue cultivating his popularity with Dinka communities who do not want to relinquish their desire for their own state, especially after Kiir opened Pandora’s box with his unilateral decree in October 2015 to replace South Sudan’s ten states with 28.

If Malong does intend to take Juba but fails to do so in the coming days, he may open up a new front, most likely from Northern Bahr El Ghazal. If such a war were to begin, Kiir might break with Malong and be forced to mend fences with Machar’s IO as well as with the Shilluk, Fertit, Balanda, Zande, Moru and other victimised ethnic groups. However, one cannot rule out the possibility that Kiir permits to Malong’s control of the SPLA but then sacrifices him if he has to yield to international pressure.

Another factor to keep an eye on is the role of Uganda, which intervened in support of the SPLA in 2013. There are suggestions that the so-called rebel White Army in Jonglei intends to march down on Juba to protect the Nuer and reinforce IO troops, but if Uganda’s air force becomes involved again and drops bombs on them before they reach Juba, the IO might be massacred. Most importantly, the Nuer who survived the 2013 Juba killings, might very well be too.

Much remains uncertain, but the future of South Sudan looks grim, and it is not just Juba. Other state capitals such as Malakal in Upper Nile and Bentiu in Unity state have seen troops movements and are incredibly tense.

Just five years after independence, and less than one year after a peace agreement was signed, a phase of a third South Sudanese civil war seems to have begun.

Clémence Pinaud is an Assistant Professor at Indiana University’s Department of International Studies. Her research focuses on the SPLA’s military history, predation strategies and marital practices.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/11/recommended-clemence-pinaud-on-south-sudan/feed/1What’s Gone Wrong in South Sudan?https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/10/whats-gone-wrong-in-south-sudan/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/10/whats-gone-wrong-in-south-sudan/#commentsSun, 10 Jul 2016 13:52:26 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3353Al Jazeera Inside Story hosts a discussion of the new fighting in South Sudan, featuring Alex de Waal with Ateny Wek Ateny, Spokesman for South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and Justin Lynch, Editorial Fellow at the New America Foundation who has worked extensively in South Sudan. Video available online. For more background on [...]]]>Al Jazeera Inside Story hosts a discussion of the new fighting in South Sudan, featuring Alex de Waal with Ateny Wek Ateny, Spokesman for South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and Justin Lynch, Editorial Fellow at the New America Foundation who has worked extensively in South Sudan. Video available online. For more background on de Waal’s analysis of South Sudan, including warning signs that have been mounting over the past few months, see his March 2016 Occasional Paper on South Sudan.
]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/07/10/whats-gone-wrong-in-south-sudan/feed/2Brexit Threatens World Peace and Securityhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/06/29/brexit-threatens-world-peace-and-security/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/06/29/brexit-threatens-world-peace-and-security/#commentsWed, 29 Jun 2016 15:08:41 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3350Published by The Boston Review, June 29, 2016.

Brexit is bad news for world peace.

Four years ago the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel committee said that the EU has “contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.” The award was justified. Because of [...]]]>

Four years ago the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel committee said that the EU has “contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.” The award was justified. Because of the EU, a generation of Europeans has been able to take peace in their continent for granted. Indeed, the surprise with which younger Europeans greeted the Nobel decision testified to the extent to which the idea of war among western European nations has become unthinkable. With a few exceptions—notably Former Yugoslavia and its fragments, and more recently the Ukraine, which are outside the EU—Europeans have abandoned settling their differences by force of arms in favor of talk and cooperation on a range of economic, social, and political issues.

The British, many of whom have been persistently skeptical about the value of the EU, in no small measure owe peace in Northern Ireland to it. Irish nationalists laid down their arms in part because the common membership of the UK and the Republic of Ireland in the EU entailed free movement across the border, and the right of citizens of each to live and work in the other. The European Convention of Human Rights was also incorporated into Northern Ireland’s law.

The collapse of the Communist Bloc after 1989 and the peaceful incorporation of the Warsaw Pact countries into a democratic political and economic order was, to a significant degree, due to the EU. The painful economic reforms those countries undertook to adjust to a free-market economy were politically possible because of the rewards of EU membership and the immense and tangible gains that it brought in its wake, notably the continental labor market. In contrast to NATO advancing its frontiers to the east, the EU’s growth was fundamentally unthreatening—a rare case of a political expansion that spelled only peace.

Tory leaders fatally misjudged what would happen when they legitimized the central plank of Britain’s neo-fascist movement.

Within the EU and the European Economic Area (which includes Norway and unofficially sweeps in Switzerland), the free movement of peoples—most notably the vast numbers of young people who traveled the length and breadth of the continent for education—has proved an exceptionally strong means of breaking down the bigotries that disfigured Europe’s age of nationalism. We might have hoped that unprecedented prosperity brought by the combination of peace and economic integration would also have checked retrograde tribalism—but evidently, it did not.

Like any large governmental bureaucracy, the EU has often been cumbersome, opaque, and remote. The translation services alone at its Brussels headquarters are vast. The regular trek of the European Parliament between Brussels and Strasbourg is farcical and costly. The EU has protected special interests, notably farmers, at the cost of subsidies and market distortions that have disadvantaged developing countries. Its regulations have sometimes been stifling. Its political leaders have often blundered—perhaps most seriously when they spurned Turkey’s advances, and with that the chance of creating a European-Mediterranean bloc that could have responded to the Arab Spring with farsighted measures, as the EU did twenty years earlier by embracing the former-Soviet countries. The monetary union was a troubled project, roping together economies with disparate capabilities. But the EU cannot be measured by the metrics of conventional governance: it is the world’s biggest and most transformative multilateral project. Above all, it is a project for peace.

Now the shortsighted petty politicking of a handful of English politicians—most especially David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and Nigel Farage, with a dishonorable mention for Jeremy Corbyn—has endangered their own country, the EU, and world peace.

• • •

The European Union was founded by men and women for whom the conflagration of the 1930s and ’40s was a recent and searing memory. They fiercely held to a pact to dampen the fires of intolerance and xenophobia wherever they flickered into life.

Britain was only half-heartedly part of this consensus, its leaders complacently and erroneously believing that fascism was anathema to their political culture. Not so: it was rather that the constituency-based electoral system made it hard for any third party to gain seats in Westminster. As a result the reactionary right was contained within the ranks of the Conservative Party, while the Labour Party and its associated trade unions contained the tendencies toward introverted nativism among municipal socialists.

Every couple of decades there has been an effort to build a neo-fascist constituency in Britain, usually on an anti-immigration platform. The latest of these is the UK Independence Party (UKIP), led by Nigel Farage, a former commodity broker who was elected, on the proportional representation system, as a UK member of the European Parliament. Founded in 1991 to campaign against the Maastricht Treaty—which created the modern European Union and later the euro—UKIP later expanded its platform into a right-wing populist and anti-European movement. The party has feasted on the bitterness of the aggrieved working class. Many of the party’s supporters are drawn from historic Labour constituencies, fallen into disaffection from de-industrialization, left behind in the country’s economic upturn, and once again bearing the brunt of the austerity measures imposed by the Conservatives after 2010. Fishermen, shipbuilders, and steelworkers, as well as farmers who benefited from the EU’s agricultural subsidies but fell on hard times when they were slashed, have sympathized with Farage’s message of blaming Brussels for their woes. Many were also receptive to his tactics of scapegoating immigrants. The last six years of ultra-austerity, with massive cutbacks in public spending, further deepened the sense of isolation and betrayal.

When he called the referendum on membership in the EU, Prime Minister David Cameron disregarded the dangers of rewriting the political rulebook and seriously misgauged the depth of resentment toward the elite. He need never have called the referendum at all: while it had long been a demand of a small but persistent Eurosceptic minority within his own party, he mistakenly believed that he could enhance his own political capital by simply calling their bluff. Along with almost the entire political establishment, the PM had imagined that the result—to remain with the EU—was a foregone conclusion. But he fatally misjudged what would happen when he unintendedly legitimized the central plank of Britain’s neo-fascist movement. The result was to place Farage and UKIP center stage.

There are civil and progressive arguments for drastically reforming the EU or even leaving it, and people who would have articulated those arguments given the platform to do so. A former chairperson of the Conservative Party, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, repudiated her Brexit position in the days before the vote for precisely those reasons. Leading Leave campaigners said they had never known she was part of their coalition—a fact that reveals the extent to which they were deaf to progressive arguments. No doubt, millions of decent British voters ticked the “Leave” box without a hint of chauvinism: they were the bewildered, taking refuge in the hope that a democratic nationalism could restore a sense of control in a frightening world. They were misled, by the leaders of both campaigns.

Cameron’s second blunder was to regard the campaign as a re-run of the last general election, an appeal to the electorate’s baser instincts and short-term calculations. Notably, he orchestrated a chorus that stressed the economic damage that would follow a “Leave” vote. Their forecast of the economic downside of leaving appears to have been correct. But the politics of fear and negativism generated their own backlash, feeding the resentment of a distrustful electorate. Failing to find potential in a politics of hope and Euro-optimism, at no time during the referendum campaign did Cameron express any enthusiasm for the EU and all the promise it holds for Britain’s youth: the future of peace; freedom to travel, work, and live wherever one likes in Europe; its model for a world of wider horizons.

Cameron’s cabinet colleagues and close friends, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove—also members of a privileged junior aristocracy, for whom the House of Commons is a seamless extension of the Oxford Union and the pages of theSpectator—equally misjudged. It appears that they thought a “Remain” outcome was certain too, but that they could gain the upper hand in internal party squabbles by siding with “Leave” and thereby rattling the prime minister.

For Johnson, the fate of Britain was no more than a platform for him to make a pitch for leading the Tories. A former mayor of London—which voted 60 percent in favor of staying in the EU—Johnson is himself the scion of a pan-European family. Throughout the campaign he looked like an opportunist with scant regard for the truth. A likely candidate to become prime minister when Cameron steps down, Johnson is now looking grim—burdened, it seems, by knowing that he has sold the electorate a false bill of goods. He will forever be branded as the man who gambled his country on his personal ambition, and threw his lot in with a horde he can neither control nor satisfy.

In early June, Gove, the beneficiary of an Oxford education, infamously dismissed the unanimous opinion of every financial institution on the adverse economic impacts of Brexit, saying that the British public had had “enough of experts.” Columnists across the political spectrum were appalled at the Lord Chancellor’s celebration of ignorance. But the fact that Gove’s populist message resonated with the public is one of the most compelling lessons of Brexit: voters smelled a rat in the unanimity of the financial institutions’ doom-laden message. The Leave campaign insinuated that the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the London Stock Exchange, and even President Barack Obama were in league with a Brussels-run conspiracy. There was indeed a rat, but it wasn’t that. The real scandal is that Western corporate capitalism has engineered globalization so that the benefits of growth accrue to only a tiny minority, while the incomes of the great majority stagnate and job security evaporates. Johnson and Gove had not the slightest intention of reversing this economic dispensation, let along the extreme economic inequality from which they benefit. Instead they found scapegoats in European social-democratic bureaucracy, and in immigrants.

Ultimately, Johnson’s and Gove’s miscalculations were more momentous than Cameron’s: their ambitions and maneuvering were swept aside in the firestorm of xenophobia whose flames they cynically fanned. This also exposed the deepest challenge at the heart of global corporate capitalism: its managers have no strategy for dealing with the popular anger in the wastelands they have created.

Whatever government is formed in the wake of Brexit will be entirely introverted and have little influence in the world—especially Europe.

As the Conservative Party has torn itself to shreds, Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, was hardly to be found. Half-hearted on the best of days in his defense of the EU, Corbyn refused to suspend political rivalries long enough to even be photographed alongside Cameron, all but absenting himself from the public debate about one of the most important decisions in modern British history. Like his Tory counterpart, he seemed to see the referendum as just another exercise in party politics, not an existential question for the nation. Corbyn looked more and more like a small-town socialist whose concerns didn’t stretch further than nationalizing the railways: at no time did he represent the vanguard of cosmopolitanism, nor even the project of a centrist transnational social democracy.

This is not the first time in Europe’s history that establishment politicians have danced with incendiary demagogues, complacently expecting they can control the outcome. Unfortunately it is unlikely to be the last. And British bigotry will encourage those who build their political fortunes on celebrating ignorance and xenophobia. Already in the days following the vote, there has been a 57 percent increase in racist and anti-immigrant incidents reported to the police. A vocal number of those who voted to leave the EU will not be satisfied to stop there: they appear to want England to be rid of all immigrants and will cheer on politicians who tell them they can have their way.

• • •

Brexit will likely spell the end of the United Kingdom—and it may be an ugly breakup. While England and Wales voted in favor of leaving the EU, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted overwhelming to remain. As a result, one or both are likely to quit the UK, leaving the Tories or UKIP as the ruling party of Little Independent England.

There is a deep irony in the fact that the Union Jack brandished by Brexit supporters on Friday morning is likely to become a historical relic. If Scotland and Northern Ireland leave, the Former UK will be reduced to flying England’s flag—the St. George’s Cross waved by supporters of the hapless English soccer team.

Two years ago when the Scottish electorate voted narrowly to remain as part of the UK, one of the most compelling arguments made by Cameron for staying was that an independent Scotland would need to negotiate a separate accession to the EU, which would be long and difficult and without a foregone conclusion. Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, reminded the English politicians of this when she announced, in her first statement following the Brexit vote, that she was already making preparations for a new referendum on Scottish independence.

A Scottish separation will be bitter but peaceful. The situation in Northern Ireland is more combustible. The 1998 Belfast Agreement and the 1999 Good Friday agreement that ended decades of violent conflict in Ulster is predicated on the common EU membership of both Britain and the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland has benefited from EU membership in numerous tangible ways, from the open border with the Republic to generous payments from the EU’s European Regional Development Fund. (An example in the public eye is EU subsidies for filming HBO’s Game of Thrones there.) The Northern Irish vote favored remaining, but was divided along sectarian lines. London needs to skillfully handle the polarized communities there, but that would require a confident and capable leadership, which is unlikely to emerge anytime soon. A resurgence of the Troubles is not in immediate prospect, but cannot be ruled out.

Just eight days before the vote, Labour MP and humanitarian activist Jo Cox was shot and stabbed to death in the street in her constituency. Her assassin was a neo-Nazi and supporter of Britain First, an ultra-nationalist far-right political party. When brought to court, he announced his name as “Death to traitors, freedom for Britain.” Crazy no doubt, but his murderous leanings were legitimized by the toxic political climate cranked up by Farage, with the complicity of the other Leave leaders. Farage’s post-referendum crowing that he won “without a single bullet being fired” is shameful, ominous, and false.

• • •

Brexit has opened a sudden void in British leadership. Johnson and Gove were visibly shaken by Cameron’s resignation the morning after, and if either of them make a bid for leadership of the Conservative Party—and hence the office of prime minister—they will face a country more bitterly divided than at any time in modern history. Whatever government is formed in the wake of the collapse of Britain’s political order will be entirely introverted and have little influence in the world—especially Europe. Britain has been a force for stability in a turbulent world. Today it is essentially without credible political leadership, both at home and on the world stage.

Such government as there may be over the next five years will be wholly consumed with the wreckage inflicted by this act. There will be the massive complications of negotiating the divorce with Europe. There will also be challenging negotiations with Scotland, Northern Ireland (and the Republic of Ireland)—and possibly London, too, as many Londoners are demanding that their strong vote to remain in the EU is taken into account. There are 125 trade agreements to be renegotiated. Britain’s civil servants will have no other agenda for as much as a decade. For two years at least, Britain will continue its regular payments to Europe—but its diplomats and civil servants will have lost any clout over EU policy.

This has practical implications on matters of peace and security. As many commentators have noted, Russian President Vladimir Putin is salivating. Britain has been a particular ally of the Eastern European members of the EU, and has been a strong advocate for EU external policies in the Middle East, especially Syria. The EU is taking the lead in developing policies to contain distress migration within the Middle East and Africa. The sudden absence of a British voice in this policymaking will weaken Europe and Britain alike. Ironically given the anti-immigrant sentiment that propelled the “Leave” vote, Britain will likely face an increase in refugees.

International policy toward Somalia was, until June 24, another fine example of Britain using its power in the EU and the United Nations to achieve an outcome that was far beyond what the UK could have achieved on its own. The 2012 conference that established the Somali Federal Government was held in London. Under British leadership, the EU provides the largest part of the money to the African Union to pay for 22,000 African peacekeepers in the country, and the EU is the biggest funder by far of the core institutions of the Somali government. For Somalia, it is a long, tough road back from statelessness. Britain leveraged the EU—and through the EU, the African Union—to achieve substantial progress toward that goal. Now a political void has opened at the heart of this effort.

Britain contributes about 14 percent of the European Development Fund, the EU’s development assistance mechanism to assist Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. But by a general rule of thumb, political influence over how that money is spent is divided three ways: one third Britain, one third France, one third the rest of the EU combined. There may be long-term efficiencies to be gained from redirecting those funds through Britain’s own Department for International Development, but at the cost of a massive loss of leverage, both within the EU and globally. This is not to mention the diminishing monetary value of an aid budget denominated in pounds, which some market analysts now predict may fall to parity with the U.S. dollar by the end of the year, a loss of value without precedent.

Britain is now a source of global instability, economic turmoil, and political uncertainty. This may not last more than a few years, but London’s reputation is damaged forever. When UN Security Council reform belatedly arrives, it is unlikely that Little England will keep the permanent seat that has been reserved for Great Britain over the last seven decades.

But whatever self-harm Britain has inflicted on its own body politic, of even greater import is the wound done to Europe and the foundational principles of the EU, namely collective security, international partnership and the rule of law, the containment of extremism, and cosmopolitanism. The Brexit campaign was, on both sides, a narrow appeal to self-interest, and the outcome is worse: a vote for bigotry and narrow nationalism and an insult to the principles that have advanced the cause of peace around the world. Brexit sends a frightening message that cosmopolitanism is reversible, and that chauvinist, ignorant nationalism smolders on, waiting only for blinkered politicians to fan it into a blaze. It reminds us that there is a bewildered and angry electorate, for whom the ideals and achievements of international peace and cooperation are not meaningful, either because they are taken for granted or because they are simply too remote from their daily lives.

The British diplomatic corps is in a state of shock. Overnight, Great Britain has been reduced to Little England and the country’s global stature has shrunk by a fraction far greater than the economic losses registered on the London Stock Exchange — or even the plummeting value of the pound sterling. Perhaps more than anyone else, Britain’s ambassadors, military and commercial attachés, and heads of aid missions in Africa are painfully aware that the Union Jack so gleefully waved by the champions of the “Leave” campaign will soon become a historical relic.

The damage to British interests is significant, but the losses for Africa could be greater still. In campaigning to leave the European Union, Minister for Africa James Duddridge argued that Britain would be able to forge stronger ties with the continent if it were unencumbered by EU inefficiencies in aid and trade. Perhaps if Duddridge had a blank slate on which to construct a new Africa policy, he could do better than Britain’s existing one, which is part bilateral and part multilateral through the EU. But no policy is ever built on a blank slate, and surveying the post-Brexit political wreckage, he is now faced with a salvage job that will involve decoupling Britain from numerous EU-led peace and development initiatives and renegotiating dozens of trade deals. Even deftly managed by Duddridge or his successor, the Brexit will leave Britain with a fraction of the influence it currently wields in Africa.

Britain’s share of payments to the European Development Fund (EDF), the European Union’s main vehicle for providing development aid to Africa, is a little more than 14 percent — third after France and Germany. If those funds were reallocated to the British Department for International Development’s bilateral aid budget, they might have better value per pound sterling in terms of poverty reduction. But that obscures the fact that Britain has gained far greater leverage over European external policy toward Africa than the one-seventh proportion suggests. The rule of thumb for EU policy toward Africa is a three-way divide: one-third Britain, one-third France, and one-third everyone else. For the next two years — or as long as Brexit takes — British taxpayers will continue to pay their country’s dues to the EDF, but few Europeans will listen to what British diplomats and aid officials have to say about how the money is spent.

The loss of British leadership in places like Somalia, where London has been the driving force behind the international strategy for stabilizing the country, will leave a dangerous void. The EU is the single-largest donor to Somalia, averaging 80 million euros per year, half of it in humanitarian funding. The EU has also led on a host of critical security issues, including counterpiracy operations and training national maritime security and law enforcement personnel. But Britain has had an outsized influence on setting EU policy for Somalia, notably ensuring that the EU funds most of the costs of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), a 22,000-strong multinational force that protects the Somali Federal Government from the extremist militant group al-Shabab.

Until recently, 90 percent of AMISOM’s costs were paid for through the African Peace Facility (APF), an EU funding mechanism set up to support peace- and capacity-building operations on the continent. But even before Britain forfeited its sway over the APF by voting to quit the European Union, pressure was building to divert funds from Somalia: France was pushing hard to reallocate APF resources to other African Union (AU) peace support operations — to the AU mission in Mali, for instance — and AMISOM’s funding quota was slashed to 80 percent in February. Britain stepped in to make up some of the difference in the short term, but troop-contributing countries such as Uganda still faced severe difficulties as a result of the cutbacks. (Last week, Uganda announcedthat it will pull its troops out of Somalia by 2017, in part because of the EU funding shortfall.) The forthcoming loss of London’s financial contribution to the fund — and, more importantly, the loss of British political leadership on Somalia within the EU — puts a big question mark over the viability of AMISOM and Europe’s Somalia strategy.

Similar question marks hang over a host of other EU-run political and security initiatives in Africa, many of which Britain has helped steward. One that should be of more than passing interest to those who voted for the Brexit — not least because fears about unfettered immigration fueled the “Leave” campaign — is the EU-Horn of Africa Migration Route Initiative, which aims to contain migrants within their home countries, or at least their immediate neighbors, to minimize the number reaching the Mediterranean Sea and Europe. This initiative has been criticized for rewarding countries like Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, all of which have poor human rights records. But investing in solutions within Africa is far more effective and economical than tightening border controls at Channel ports. Britain’s reduced financial contribution in the coming years — and, once again, the evaporation of its political leadership — will undermine the initiative and could ironically worsen Britain’s immigration woes.

But it’s not just EU initiatives that will suffer as a result of the Brexit. The financial earthquake that hit Britain after the vote has already rippled through African economies — especially South Africa, where many large companies are co-listed on the London Stock Exchange. Britain is one of Africa’s major trading partners, meaning that a British recession could have a lasting impact on the continent. The European Union has preferential trade agreements with every African country except Libya and South Sudan. Britain will have to renegotiate all of them as a result of the Brexit. In some cases, this will allow for more mutually beneficial arrangements, such as eliminating some of the existing distortions — subsidies on European beef and milk, for instance — in agricultural trade imposed by the European Union. But hammering out new trade deals with 52 African countries will take time and will be far down the list of priorities for a desperately overstretched British government in the years ahead. Meanwhile, without Britain’s reliably anti-protectionist voice within EU trade negotiations, there is a danger that European trade policy will become less favorable to African nations.

But perhaps the biggest blow to Africa from the Brexit comes in the least tangible sphere of international political culture. As the weakest continent, Africa has the most to gain from the principles of multilateralism — collective security, international cooperation, and respect for international law. The continent achieves its best outcomes for democracy and human rights, and for peace and security, when its governments collaborate in the African Union and regional economic communities, and when they work in partnership with the United Nations and the European Union. Peer pressure and collective reputation management have been important tools for combating authoritarianism and war. But Africa’s achievements are fragile, and many of the norms and principles espoused in the African Union’s Constitutive Act — and in its array of protocols, declarations, and agreements — are still aspirational. Brexit is a body blow to the international political culture of multilateralism, and one that will reverberate negatively through Africa.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/06/27/brexit-is-bad-news-for-africa-period/feed/0The Politics of Naming the Ethiopian Federationhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/06/22/the-politics-of-naming-the-ethiopian-federation/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/06/22/the-politics-of-naming-the-ethiopian-federation/#respondWed, 22 Jun 2016 16:54:29 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3344WPF’s African peace missions program director, Mulugeta Grebrehiwot, has a new essay out with Fiseha Haftetsion, Published in JES XLVIII (December 2015): 89 -117. Below is an excerpt.

Naming political parties, public institutions, governments and governance systems is a serious matter. First, names are expected to summarize the nature, purpose, and behavior of the entities they represent. secondly, names convey messages with a direct bearing on the popular perception of a system or an entity and therefore contribute to its approval or rejection by the public. In some instances, names denote a political position and an action called for by a group. For example, ‘naming’ the military regime that took power from the Emperor in 1974 was a controversial issue among the main progressive parties of the time. The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) named the regime ‘Fascist’ while advocating for a revolution to overthrow it. But the All Ethiopian socialist Party (MEISON) called it a’military junta’ and asked for a ‘critical support’ to the regime to ensure a peaceful transition. Both parties were not simply fighting on naming‘; but, on their political positions and their respective call for actions as expressed in their debate on naming the regime. Last but not least, calling systems or entities with a name that reflects their nature, missions and/or objectives is a matter of justice.For example, naming a political party fighting for the secession of a certain region a “unionist party” is misleading. It is tantamount to public cheating to name an institution engaged in systematic torture a “rehabilitation center”. It is confusing to name a country that has never held any elections a “democratic republic”. Hence, naming organizations /institutions and systems is different from naming individuals, as the former has political implications and the latter is simply driven by individual wishes and preferences.

[…]

Three possible explanations can be provided for why writers label the Ethiopian federation “ethnic”. The first and probably the minority group consist of those who do not exert much effort in trying to digest the distinction between ethnicity and nationalism but take the name for granted and focus on measuring the merits and demerits of the arrangement (see for example: Harneit-Siever et al 2010; Smidt and Kinfe 2007; Alem 2003; van Der Beken 2012; Roeder and Rothchild 2005; Young 199s). The second group consists of those who come from a constructivist approach seeing no meaningful difference between the two. The third group, the concern this article intends to address, consists of those who are opposed to the federal arrangement and intend to use naming as a means of political opposition. such writers want to ridicule the system at any cost. They seem careless even if they would camouflage academics with their political stand (see Berhanu 2007; Messay 1999; Paulos 2011). The same applies to foreign writers. Some of them may label the Ethiopian federation ‘ethnic’ because some other writer has done so. others may use the term because of the inherent bias to see Africa as, yet, an ideal home for ethnicity and tribalism (Rangers 1999) and, hence, they are uninterested in conducting some investigation about the reality of the system they are writing about although they may have a similar system at home with a different name (see Watts 2008).

We want to reemphasize that debates on whether a multinational federal arrangement is preferable or proper for Ethiopia should be encouraged. But it is also crucial that the system is presented as it is with no exaggerations, be they in the affirmative or the negative. The label “ethnic” is one way of ridiculing the system. This, apart from being unjust and improper, distorts the true nature of the Ethiopian federal arrangement. Distortion impedes proper understanding of the system and future positive engagements.

Last but not least, we want to underline that the design must not be confused with any practical irregularities that may be encountered in implementing this infant system. The question should be whether the system provides a venue for entertaining such challenges.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/06/22/the-politics-of-naming-the-ethiopian-federation/feed/0World Peace: Still the most important challenge for the U.S. Presidenthttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/06/09/world-peace-still-the-most-important-challenge-for-the-u-s-president/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/06/09/world-peace-still-the-most-important-challenge-for-the-u-s-president/#commentsThu, 09 Jun 2016 19:31:05 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3337Fifty-three years ago today, on June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy gave the Commencement address to the American University in Washington DC. He began by explaining his choice of subject: “a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is to rarely perceived – yet it is the most important topic [...]]]>Fifty-three years ago today, on June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy gave the Commencement address to the American University in Washington DC. He began by explaining his choice of subject: “a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is to rarely perceived – yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.”

It is a speech no less significant than President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address a hundred years earlier.

Kennedy spoke less than a year after the Cuban missile crisis, with the full authority and passion of a leader who knew just how close the world had come to a nuclear war. He knew also that the strength of his leadership, and that of the United States, was demonstrated by the restraint he had enforced on bellicose members of the administration and armed forces.

Kennedy spoke of the implications of a war, and by implication of the futility of ‘winning’ a war in the modern age. He referred of course to nuclear weapons, which had the capacity to destroy everything. Today’s wars—even the appalling conflict in Syria—kill fewer people and level fewer cities. But today’s targeted weapons unravel the moral fabric of societies—on both sides—and generate hate and oppression, with the same relentlessness. The limited nature of today’s conflicts and the limited segment of the American population who fights them should not obscure the core challenge for the world’s most powerful military power: commitment to a strategy for peace as a principle.

The President, whose own political decisions faltered on this front, notably in Viet Nam and Laos, nonetheless understood peace as “a process – a way of solving problems” that offers timeless relevance. He concluded his address by invoking a vision of the United States committed to using its leadership to end war:

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough – more than enough – of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on – not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.

American leaders no longer speak about peace. They talk instead about security, wrongly implying that we could achieve security without peace, and peddling the illusion that peace is for the weak.

June 10 should be America’s day for world peace, this year and every year. President Kennedy’s speech should be required reading in every school in the country. His words should be the measure of wisdom and strength in foreign policy and national security, for every presidential candidate, especially today.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/06/09/world-peace-still-the-most-important-challenge-for-the-u-s-president/feed/1How Mass Atrocities Endhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/27/how-mass-atrocities-end/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/27/how-mass-atrocities-end/#respondFri, 27 May 2016 12:30:03 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3334My edited volume, How Mass Atrocities End: Studies from Guatemala, Burundi, Indonesia, the Sudans, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Iraq (Cambridge 2016) was published recently, with case study chapters by Roddy Brett, Noel Twagiramungu, Claire Q. Smith, Alex de Waal, Fanar Haddad, and myself. To help bridge the academic research with policy audiences, we also produced a short briefing paper based [...]]]>My edited volume, How Mass Atrocities End: Studies from Guatemala, Burundi, Indonesia, the Sudans, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Iraq (Cambridge 2016) was published recently, with case study chapters by Roddy Brett, Noel Twagiramungu, Claire Q. Smith, Alex de Waal, Fanar Haddad, and myself. To help bridge the academic research with policy audiences, we also produced a short briefing paper based on insights from the book. The text is below and the full briefing paper is available as a pdf.

KEY MESSAGES:

National political agendas define how atrocities end, not international policy or interventions.

Before the 1990s, endings are predominately determined by perpetrators’ generally successful use of overwhelming force to achieve their goals.

Thereafter, atrocity endings are more varied due to a wider array of influences impacting patterns violence, and dependent on the convergence of multiple interests towards de-escalation of mass violence.

Windows of opportunity to de-escalate violence can only be consolidated and maintained in places where a state has sufficient capacity.

Ending atrocities is not synonymous and can be at odds with advancing democracy.

KEY FINDINGS:

National Politics Determine Atrocity Endings

Atrocity endings are always compromised and complicated. Even when violence subsides, its political, social, health and economic impacts have long-term affects. Nonetheless, research on endings can help us understand how power operates and decisions are made that alter the course of mass violence. Local and regional actors are the most important actors in determining when and how an ending is possible. Our cases confirm one of the key insights of recent work on genocide and mass atrocities[i]: that perpetrators are guided by a strategic goal of gaining or consolidating power, rather than the physical elimination of the targeted group. Endings occur when perpetrators realize that their interests are better served by decreasing violence than by continuing it. Decisions to scale back violence are complicated by the way in which violence, once unleashed, tends to take on its own logic, escalating in intensity, expanding geographic reach, enlisting agents, and activating diverse agendas. Endings become possible at the point at which the convergence of multiple drivers of violence starts to unravel, as our cases illustrate. In contexts where the perpetrators are sufficiently cohesive within a command structure, this may appear are a single decision-making moment. Elsewhere, it may appear more chaotic.

Even in the few cases studied where significant political change occurs as part of the ending dynamic—including when a new regime comes to power, national and local patterns of political contestation and governance practices determine how mass atrocities end.

In Burundi, episodes of violence in the 1970s and 1980s were characterized by Hutu groups using violence against the state or Tutsi civilians, prompting a response of overwhelming force from the Tutsi-dominated military. Violence subsided as the government and military consolidated control and “restored order.” This pattern changed after 1993, Noel Twagiramungu writes, when the Hutu armed opposition increased its capacity and for the first time began to hold territory. Violence thereafter de-escalated through a combination of key leaders’ commitment to moderation, the stalemate in the armed conflict, the influence of the war and genocide in neighboring Rwanda, and international pressure. This combination created a context whereby the gains of political moderation outpaced those of ethnic extremism, and fueled a transformational ending—whereby disputes between groups shifted to the political plane, no longer occurring solely along the ethnic divide. The new alignment of interests appears to be holding even as Burundi continues to experience political violence in response to Pres. Pierre Nkurunziza’s contested third term.

Armed conflict in Guatemala began in 1965 and did not end until 1995. The phase of mass atrocities, characterized by an articulated plan to kill significant portions of the indigenous Maya population and reorganize the survivors in securitized population centers, was concentrated between 1981 and 1983. As Roddy Brett argues, this phase ended when the Guatemalan army achieved its goals: not to physically eliminate the Maya, but to create a modern, institutionalized state with a consolidated, Ladino identity. The army further managed to secure a seat for itself at the nation’s economic table, previously dominated by a social and business elite. An internationally mediated peace process provided the final touch on the emergence of the modern Guatemalan state. Brett contends that the peace agreement (1997), despite its credentials and rights-oriented mechanisms, protected the army’s gains and did nothing to alter the structural marginalization of the Maya. Overt, large-scale violence is no longer necessary to solidify these outcomes that disadvantage indigenous communities.

Across the many instances of mass atrocities in Sudan’s contemporary history, Alex de Waal chronicles two kinds of endings: one, the government achieves its immediate goals; and two, perpetrator groups can no longer sustain high levels of violence because of internal dissent, resistance by the targeted groups, and organizational and resource constraints. Such endings are incomplete, with unresolved conflicts risking recurrent mass violence. The greatest risk for mass atrocities arises when the central government and provincial military elites both have interests in mass violence, creating an escalatory spiral. Sudan’s “endings” are better understood as shifts from high-level mass atrocities to lower-level violence when there is a breakdown in coordination between these two sets of actors. A similar set of factors is found in South Sudan, but with a less clear distinction between a weaker center and relatively more powerful provincial military-political elites. It follows that it is even hard to locate any clear ending to mass atrocities in South Sudan.

Indonesian atrocities, as Claire Smith demonstrates, ended in dramatically different fashion during the Suharto period of military dictatorship and under the semi-democratic state that followed. However, this historical line cannot explain additional differences between two key cases, Papua and East Timor, both of which suffered violence before and after political transition. A number of arguably unique factors aligned to enable East Timor to exit a cycle of systematic violence through independence: an extremely capable Timorese leadership inspired a transnational activist network, which was able to internationalize their political agenda. The first Indonesian leader after Suharto’s military dictatorship, B. J. Habibie, saw himself as a reformer and tried to liberalize the state. While he was unable to consolidate his agenda within either the military or government, the internal dissent created an opening seized by the Timorese and backed by threat of international force. This opening swiftly closed, as the case of Papua demonstrates. There, the government and military decided that there would be no further independence for Indonesian territories. Instead, they experimented with a range of policies to quiet separatist hopes: increased cultural and political expression, militarized crackdowns and attempts to co-opt the elite into the status quo.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the initial phase of conflict in 1992 witnessed an enormous spike of killing and displacement, as the Bosnian Serbs made quick and effective use of their military superiority to claim and then consolidate control of over 70 per cent of Bosnian territory. This initial phase of mass atrocities, argues Bridget Conley-Zilkic, halted due to the “success” of the campaign, the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s armed resistance, and the Bosnian Serbs’ internal limitations. Violence continued throughout the conflict but not at the same intensity of killing, except following the fall of Srebrenica in 1995. The conflict was halted as regional alliances shifted, consensus emerged on the political framework for the Yugoslav successor states, an offensive by the Bosnian government and Croatian army reduced the area held by the Bosnian Serbs, and bold U.S. diplomacy seized the moment. While often treated as a stand-alone exemplar of what international military power can accomplish, the role that NATO airpower played, while particularly important in breaking the siege of Sarajevo, cannot be accurately assessed in isolation from the broader context.

A major blind spot of the anti-atrocities movement is Iraq post-2003. Despite some human rights-based arguments backing the initial intervention, the U.S.-led intervention followed a political-military, not humanitarian or anti-atrocities logic; a framing that anti-atrocity activists failed to challenge. Since 2003, Iraq has experienced almost every “remedy” for mass atrocities that the anti-atrocity toolbox has to offer: condemnation, sanctions, no-fly zones, trials, regime change, the full policy attention of the United States, and a seemingly endless flow of development funds. Yet it has experienced more than a decade’s worth of fluctuating violence consistently characterized by targeting of civilians, with no end in sight. Fanar Haddad argues that before 2003, large-scale violence against civilians in Iraq ended when the Iraqi state deployed overwhelming force to accomplish its goals. After 2003, despite (or because of) the U.S. occupation, there has been no force capable of asserting sufficient state control to subdue violence. Violence escalates when various incentives converge: anti-state, anti-Shi’ite, and anti-occupation violence on the one hand, concentrated against pro-State, anti-Sunni, and anti-terrorist violence on the other hand. An “ending” of sorts was possible in 2007–2008 as Sunni leaders realized they were losing the armed conflict and reached out to the U.S. to bolster their position within the new Iraq. Simultaneously, the U.S. counterinsurgency policy shifted to a more population-centric approach that not only increased numbers of American boots on the ground, but helped drive a wedge between mainstream Sunni leaders and al-Qaeda elements. Additionally, the Iraqi state began behaving like a state rather than a coalition of Shi’ite interests. But the moment of contingency when these factors aligned was short-lived: sectarian interests reasserted dominance over state politics, and re-confirmed violence as the preferred means through which politicians would pursue their incompatible goals.

Post-Cold War Patterns of Mass Atrocity Endings

During the Cold War, as the cases studied demonstrate, it was possible for states to deploy overwhelming force against civilian populations and retain their position in the international community. These large-scale campaigns of violence against civilians concluded when the state met its objectives. One exception in this study is Sudan, where the state never fully successfully defeated opposition forces regardless of the level of atrocities it committed.

This patterns changes in the 1990s. While policies associated with the anti-atrocity toolbox played a role, they do not determine atrocity endings but rather interact with other forces to diminish the capacity of states to impose endings through overwhelming violence. These additional factors include: democratization, emphasis on human rights, economic development, increased occurrence of international mediation, and interposition of peacekeeping forces. In parallel, whereas previously authoritarian, strong states were the most likely perpetrators of genocide and mass atrocities, today civilians are most vulnerable to violence in states that are neither fully authoritarian nor democratic. Together, these trends have resulted in positive outcomes: global reductions in the number and scale of atrocity events, a trend that is confirmed across our cases with the exception of Iraq post-2003.

However, these conditions also produce new challenges that complicate how mass atrocities end. Greater restrictions on states and the centralization of power do not simply allow the ‘positive’ forces to exert more control over endings. Rather, we see the multiplication of forces impacting endings, for better or worse. While this does include international actors seeking to influence endings by deploying specific anti-atrocity policies, it also includes a wider range of actors from local, national and regional communities, which are interested in security, gaining power, economic advantage, democratization, or other agendas. Into this mix, we must view the widely decried and increasingly prominent role of nonstate armed groups in the perpetration of violence. Our cases suggest that non-state armed perpetrators have long been an important component in the perpetration of violence against civilians in the former Yugoslavia, Sudan, Burundi and Indonesia. However, a difference today in many locations is the decreased capacity of states relative to non-state armed actors. Increasingly, the distinction between state and nonstate armed actors is less meaningful; ‘state actors’ often don’t possess or display the qualities of ‘stateness’ or governmentality any more than their supposedly ‘non-state’ armed challengers.

Recognition that political power is more diffuse and a wider array of actors are involved in situations of mass atrocities tempers the story of how anti-atrocity policies contribute to endings. The dominant paradigm of an anti-atrocity toolbox is predicated on a straightforward relation of external pressure on a coherent state to bring about policy changes. Yet the record is remarkably mixed, not only in which actors apply what tools, but also the impact of policy tools. Our cases align with findings from statistical studies demonstrating that even the most robust policy response – use of international military forces in the name of protecting civilians – does not produce a consistent outcome. The same holds true for the full range of diplomatic, economic, military and legal tools that are brought to bear on situations[ii].

To draw out just one factor—use of military force – we see significant variations in outcomes. For instance, Alex de Waal argues that the negotiation of a ceasefire agreement and the deployment of a relatively small group of African Union ceasefire monitors impacted the de-escalation of violence in Darfur. The later deployment of a large, Chapter VII UN peacekeeping force did not coincide with a reduction of violence. Claire Smith emphasizes three particularly significant actions by international actors in East Timor: transnational advocacy networks; UN representatives on the ground in 1999; and Australian military intervention, threatened against Indonesia’s wishes and then carried out with Indonesia’s permission. However, Smith finds that none of these factors was relevant to patterns of violence in Papua, which was never internationalized to the extent that the government felt obligated to reform its relationship with its critics there. In Bosnia, Conley-Zilkic notes that the presence of a UN peacekeeping force (without a civilian protection mandate) may have delayed the onset of mass killing in Srebrenica, but neither there nor elsewhere was it the determinative factor in the endings of mass atrocities. She also argues that the 1995 NATO air campaign, which unquestionably played a role in terms of ending the siege of Sarajevo, cannot explain the larger dynamics of either atrocity or conflict endings. In Iraq, leaving aside the question of onset of violence and observing only the trends in decline of violence, Haddad notes that changes in U.S. military strategy played a role in the temporary decrease in violence that began in 2008, but was incapable of forging a more sustainable ending.

Atrocity Endings are Increasingly Contingent

Endings in post-1990 cases of mass atrocities are still governed by the same logic as before this period: perpetrators decide that they can better pursue their long-term interests through policies other than violence against civilians. However, because the pursuit of interests is increasingly influenced by a wider range of actors and agendas, particularly in weaker states, declines in violence have become more contingent on the alignment of various factors to open a window of opportunity.

While the application of discrete anti-atrocity policies can make a difference – and in several of our cases clearly do contribute to ending dynamics – the more fundamental point is that the ending dynamic cannot be disarticulated into distinct, component parts. Endings are possible when the preponderance of political factors produce a realignment of political interest. Thus, in terms of direct actions that international players might take – precisely the toolbox model that has dominated the anti-atrocities agenda – actual endings do not suggest a one-to-one relationship between international actions and the occurrence of atrocities.The low capacity of both governmental and insurgent armed groups can result in highly contingent compromise endings that are not always sustainable. Agreements may be possible only at the convergence of multiple factors, therefore are temporary— what de Waal terms “turbulent” in the sense of conditions that are changeable and even chaotic over short spans of time, but retain their structure over longer periods. We find in Iraq, Sudan and South Sudan, for instance, where political expression too often includes perpetration of atrocities, that violence fluctuates in scale as interests align and diverge.

Ending Atrocities is Not Synonymous with Advancing Democracy

Today’s more complex and contingent patterns of atrocities endings emerge out of the partial success of efforts to encourage democratization, human rights, and economic liberalization, as well as the saliency of the norm against atrocities. But the progress on reducing atrocities cannot be read as absolute gains in terms of producing capable, fully democratic states.

At times, democratization and anti-atrocities policies can even be at odds. Given that perpetrators of atrocities generally aim to consolidate control, endings are possible when perpetrators decide that their long-term interests are sufficiently secured and better served by other policies. Hence, international policies that simultaneously pursue democratization – which acts to increased political competition and generates additional power centers, weakening centralized state structures – and ending atrocities may be counter-productive for perpetrators of atrocities. As we saw in Bosnia, Indonesia, and Iraq opening formerly tightly-regulated political systems to competition proved destabilizing both to incumbents and contenders. This is not an argument in favour of the old model of strong states capable of using overwhelming force against civilians, but it is a description of what may well be a new constellation of threats that arise as power is differently legitimated, distributed and managed. If violence is escalating, policy positions that favour stabilization in order to avert or halt atrocities may be at odds with democratization.

For example, elections are frequently treated as an endgame for post-conflict peacebuilding programing, and yet are consistently cited as triggers for violence. Frequent change in leadership is another warning for mass atrocities, but regime change is considered the most potent tool to halt their occurrence. When large-scale, overwhelming violence against civilians is on-going, these contradictions in approach may appear less important. Nonetheless, they bear testimony that in weak states the paradigms for democratic statebuilding may also increase risks for mass atrocities.

It is important not to confuse changes in the occurrence or risk of mass violence targeting civilians with the conditions that enable deep democratic practices to take root. There is a credible argument to be made in the cases of Guatemala, Timor Leste, Indonesia, and Bosnia that mass atrocities of the sort that placed these cases on our agenda are unlikely to recur. Even in Burundi, which has surged back up the atrocities watch list, the splintering of violence and actors has more in common with the period of the conclusion of the civil war than with the starkly asymmetrical violence of previous decades. However, what remains are a variety of forms of violence, oppression, and dysfunction.

The diminished likelihood of mass atrocities in these locations correlates with the capacity of states to adopt the trappings of liberal governance, while testing the limits of how much political reform is necessary. Key power brokers in states’ security and governance sectors adjusted to the new rules of elections, liberal economic policies, cooperating with U.S. security strategy, and the prohibition on violence against civilians that surpasses a high threshold. Leaders adapted by calibrating how much violence the new rules would tolerate against how much was needed to protect their control over power.

It would be false to read these transformations as qualitative advances towards democratization; they do not on their own herald a more just or democratic dispensation. In this, reducing the likelihood of mass atrocities is fundamentally different than efforts to advance political rights or addressing structural violence, which require true reform of governance relationships. It is easier for those in power to remain under the mass atrocities radar and still dominate the political and economic scene than it is to adhere to other tenets of human rights or democratization.

On the question of recurrence, we must bracket Iraq, Sudan, South Sudan and Burundi as places where violence continues. In these cases, political contestation regularly includes violence, part of the expression of political contention and elite bargaining. Actual violence ebbs and flows in relation to new political realignments or shifts, but appears, for now, to be a persistent part of how these countries function. In South Sudan and Iraq, the government itself is so poorly institutionalized that it makes little sense to describe its actions and capacities in terms of a state. In these countries, the calibration of violence in line with the rules of the “international community” simply is not possible. The state in both cases offers no decision-making apparatus to govern use of violence; which is not to say that decisions are not made by ‘state’ or ‘nonstate actors’, but that they are not made within the context and capacity associated with a centralized state. Therefore, “endings” are not possible; only fluctuations as various factors align and break apart.

Conclusion and Implications

Two key questions are central to effective efforts to halt widespread and systematic violence against civilians: 1) what factors influence how key leaders perceive the strategic value of violence against civilians? 2) How, given variations in state capacity, can the interests of key leaders be harnessed to terminate violence?

The factors that seem to contribute to decline do not readily translate into a policy playbook that applies evenly to all locations. There is a limit to how much societies can absorb and integrate internationally defined change into their own practices, regardless of pressure, even in its most coercive forms. Change comes when the alignment of political interests shifts. International efforts to expand the norm against atrocities has borne fruit, but the results should not be understood as a direct output of any particular anti-atrocity policies nor as necessarily the rooting of democratic practices.

When states are strong enough to adopt minimal standards of liberalism, there is reduction in their use of widespread and systematic assaults against civilians. However, this reduction exists alongside on-going dysfunction, oppression, and lower levels of violence. For states that cannot summon the means, and where key actors lack the incentives or will to play by the new international rules, we see continuing mass atrocities. Neither in contexts where states are capable nor weak, , do we see the creation of the forms of governance that adhere to the standards of liberal peace or state-building ideals. The contributions of the anti-atrocity agenda form a more modest, yet nonetheless life-saving change.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/27/how-mass-atrocities-end/feed/0Europe’s Challenge in the Horn of Africahttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/24/europes-challenge-in-the-horn-of-africa/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/24/europes-challenge-in-the-horn-of-africa/#respondTue, 24 May 2016 12:22:21 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3332Essay published by openDemocracy, May 24, 2016, as part of a special series in conjunction with the publication of a report by the Human Security Study Group at the LSE, which is convened by Mary Kaldor and Javier Solana, entitled From Hybrid Peace to Human Security: Rethinking the EU Strategy Towards Conflict.

Almost all of Europe’s maritime trade with Asia passes within a few miles of the coast of the Horn of Africa, in particular the narrow straits of the Bab al Mandab, where the tiny African country of Djibouti is separated from Yemen by less than 30 kilometers of water.

The Horn of Africa — which also includes Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan — has never historically defined itself as a region. It is diverse in physical and human geography, with extraordinary linguistic diversity, and with equal numbers of Christians and Muslims. Its peoples are linked to Africa, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean — and more recently to Europe and America. But they rarely convene as the people of the Horn. Rather, the Horn of Africa has been defined by outsiders, particularly the world’s great powers, as a region that spells trouble.

Main artery

The Horn’s liability is its location. When the Suez Canal opened in 1869, the Red Sea became one of the world’s main arteries for commerce. Its southern reaches were briefly threatened a decade ago by piracy off the Somali coast. Today there’s a much more serious peril: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular controls a stretch of the coastline of the Gulf of Aden. We have yet to see what maritime terrorism will do for insurance rates for shipping.

Meanwhile the Saudi Arabia-led coalition of countries intervening in the Yemeni civil war are rushing to secure their military and political flank in Africa. In doing so they are shaking the already-fragile security order in the Horn of Africa — notably by pouring money into Somali factions and bringing Eritrea out of isolation by equipping military bases there. There are real risks of renewed war, notably between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Violent extremism

Alongside maritime security, two other issues are thrusting the Horn onto Europe’s political agenda. One is violent extremism: the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab is not only a threat to the people of the region, but far beyond. In response, the African Union has deployed a counter-insurgency operation dressed as a peacekeeping force. The African Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) is largely funded by the EU: the single biggest European security expenditure on the continent. And while they fight terrorists, Saudi Arabia and Qatar also fund the spread of their intolerant, extremist version of Islam, Wahhabism. Traditional, tolerant Sufi forms of Islam are on the retreat in Somalia and Ethiopia. Where Wahhabism penetrates, militancy follows.

Migration expertise

The second issue is migration. Behind Syrians and Afghans, Eritreans fleeing their despotic government are the third largest group of refugees arriving in Europe today. Out of desperation, the EU has started to overcome its scruples and provide development aid to Eritrea—though its clear that spending aid money on that country’s electricity infrastructure isn’t going to change the circuits of political power, and so is most unlikely to stop the exodus.

It’s a typical ‘do something!’ reflex rather than a considered policy. And Europe needs to be aware that the Horn hosts many, many more refugees and migrants than ever make their way to the shores of the Mediterranean. Ethiopia alone has more than 700,000 refugees, and it provides free secondary education to them. Europe’s panic over distress migration needs to be tempered by the knowledge that African countries are doing far more — and also know far more about what works in dealing with this problem.

Where is the EU?

The Horn is on the cusp of becoming a strategic hard security issue for Europe. And not only Europe: China is building its first overseas military base in the enclave state of Djibouti, within sight of the procession of container ships that carry the greater part of Chinese exports to Europe. Saudi Arabia is constructing a Red Sea fleet. Iran and Russia are both interested.

Despite the activism of the EU Special Envoy for the Horn, Alex Rondos, a coherent EU policy is not yet within grasp.

Until recently, the Horn of Africa has been, for Europe, a region for engagement on issues such as poverty reduction and humanitarian action, conflict resolution and democratization. Policies and programmes have been well-meaning, but have had modest impacts. This is human security-lite: fragmented and inconsistent in accordance with disparate objectives. The risk is that the EU will transition from an ineffective human security policy to an ineffective hard security policy, and end up with neither.

But, approached rightly, Europe can have both, and the Horn can benefit. Indeed, a combination of a top-down approach aiming at preventing wars, and a bottom-up approach framed by the people’s issues, is the best chance for progress.

One talking shop we could do with

Starting at the top, one of the most striking things about the Horn and the Red Sea is that there is no regional organization that can grapple with its security challenges. The African Union does not cross the Red Sea. The InterGovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) includes the countries of the Horn, but not Egypt — an historic powerbroker, with strategic interests in the Nile and the Red Sea — and also is confined to the African shore. The Arab League is not effective, which is one reason why the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has taken the lead in the Yemeni intervention, and is using financial muscle to win African countries to support its operations, rather than multilateral diplomacy. Ethiopia, the pivotal state of the Horn, is landlocked and keenly fears being surrounded by hostile states backed by historic rivals such as Egypt.

In the absence of any Red Sea forum or similar peace and security mechanism, the EU can play a role as convenor of the overlapping multilateralisms of the various regional organizations that between them could provide the needed forum for defining and addressing the region’s problems.

It is the simplest of beginnings: a talking shop. This leverages the EU’s principled and strategic commitment to multilateralism; it distinguishes the EU from other western approaches that have been to project power and vanquish enemies rather than build peace. It also distinguishes itself from the dominant security strategy in the Middle East, namely ‘coalitions of the willing’ that engage in military deterrence and force projection. This can build on the real opportunities that exist in the Horn, namely the African Union’s hard-won norms and principles of resolving conflicts through political means. Can this deliver peace? It cannot do so alone, but without such a mechanism, the chances for durable peace are remote.

Pluralism and tolerance

The human security dimension is equally important. This is a long and complex agenda including a host of issues from human rights to the environment. It directly intersects with two of the EU’s main strategic worries — migration and violent extremism. Only with better prospects for human development, will young people be ready to stay in the region rather than seek a better and freer life in Europe. Only with a reinvigoration of the values of pluralism and tolerance will the apparently relentless spread of Wahhabism among the region’s Muslims be reversed.

What knits these issues together, and where the EU has a unique advantage as an external partner, is the need for an integrated regional approach. The countries of the Horn and their immediate neighbours in the Arab world possess all the potential of a richly variegated region. The huge differences in togography, climate, natural resources and human capabilities across the region mean that, better integrated, each country has valuable comparative advantages. Ethiopia’s national security strategy, founded on the ‘economy first’ principle of promoting economic growth and poverty reduction, while tying Ethiopia more closely to its neighbours through transport and power infrastructure, provides a foundation on which to pursue this.

Reviving neglected commitments

Meanwhile, a formerly vibrant agenda of popular engagement with peace and security issues has stalled. The African Union was established in 2000 riding a wave of popular demand for democracy, peace and unity. Its foundational principles are strongly democratic and its declarations and protocols (such as in Tripoli in 2009) repeatedly affirm the importance of academic freedom and civil society participation in Africa’s peace and security mechanisms. In 2005, IGAD adopted a regional security strategy document with major inputs from civil society organizations, which affirmed that promoting regional security was coterminous with the progress of democratic participation.

These commitments, solemnly adopted, have been neglected: now is the time to revive them. There is nothing comparable across the Red Sea, where the GCC is essentially a club of autocrats. The EU has the rationale it needs to place itself in the middle of this tri-continental conversation, and to contribute to both the hard security and the human security of the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/24/europes-challenge-in-the-horn-of-africa/feed/0Review of Katri Merikallio and Tapani Ruokanen, The Mediator: A biography of Martti Ahtisaarihttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/19/review-of-katri-merikallio-and-tapani-ruokanen-the-mediator-a-biography-of-martti-ahtisaari/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/19/review-of-katri-merikallio-and-tapani-ruokanen-the-mediator-a-biography-of-martti-ahtisaari/#respondThu, 19 May 2016 12:21:47 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3317Excerpt from a review of: Katri Merikallio and Tapani Ruokanen, The Mediator: A biography of Martti Ahtisaari (translated from the Finnish by David Mitchell and Pamela Kaskinen), London, Hurst, 2015. Full review published by the Times Literary Supplement.

How did a small town high-school graduate with no formal qualifications become one of the world’s favourite fixers of apparently insoluble problems? Martti Ahtisaari was not only all of these things, but also, in his own words, ‘I was a civil servant who happened to slip into office because the Finnish people were tired of ordinary politicians.’ (p. 208) The office he ‘slipped into’ was the presidency, for a single term (he chose not to run again) from 1994 to 2000.

[…]

For the international mediator, it’s not his war: he is neither tainted by the crimes nor related to the victims. But his conscience is also on the table, and he may believe in peace not as an exercise in political calculus, but as a humanitarian necessity. He doesn’t choose the parties or the dispute, and his control is limited to skill in handling the agenda, and moral suasion.

Ahtisaari is frank about dealing with war criminals. Asked to mediate over the Kosovo war, Ahtisaari walked straight up to Slobodan Milosevic, shook him by the hand, and addressed him as ‘Mr. President.’ Ahtisaari also told Milosevic that the Prosecutor of the Yugoslav tribunal would be seeking an arrest warrant for him, and there was nothing he, Ahtisaari, could do about it. In common parlance, ‘speaking diplomatically’ means obscuring an unpleasant reality. A better meaning would be courteous candour.

Called upon to facilitate a peace agreement in the Indonesian province of Aceh, Ahtisaari was candid in his concerted efforts to control the agenda of the talks, and equally frank that at any agreement reached could not be enforced with international troops. Ahtisaari seeks peace not through an impartiality of equidistance between the warring sides, but because he believes in peace.

Merikallio and Ruokanen’s book contributes to the long-running debate on what the academy can contribute to the craft of conflict resolution. Ahtisaari is no intellectual, and this biography has scant reference to any scholarly contributions to his thinking or the key decisions he made therein. It makes an interesting comparison with another recent peacemaker’s memoir, The Fog of Peace, an account by Jean-Marie Guéhenno of his eight years head of peacekeeping at the United Nations. Guéhenno is a wholly different kind of international civil servant: an avid reader and a philosopher. In his prologue, Guéhenno confesses that when in office he read neither political science nor ‘how to’ books and reports with their detailed recommendations for how to solve international crises. He didn’t find them useful. Rather, he writes, ‘What I needed was the fraternal companionship of other actors before me who had had to deal with confusion, grapple with the unknown, and yet had made decisions.’ Peacemaking is its own school, and Artisaari is a master.

Reference:

Jean-Marie Guéhenno, The Fog of Peace: A memoir of international peacekeeping in the 21st century, Washington DC: Brookings, 2015.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/19/review-of-katri-merikallio-and-tapani-ruokanen-the-mediator-a-biography-of-martti-ahtisaari/feed/0Designer Activism and Post-Democracyhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/17/designer-activism-and-post-democracy/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/17/designer-activism-and-post-democracy/#commentsTue, 17 May 2016 13:08:42 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3327Published by openDemocracy on May 17, 2016.

Celebrity philanthropists like Bono, Madonna, George Clooney and Angelina Jolie have become the public face of the humanitarian agenda, along with gala events such as Comic Relief in Britain and its counterpart Red Nose Day in the USA. There’s nothing new about the social elite becoming publicly involved in ‘good causes,’ but today’s highly-networked configurations of power, business, media and charity are different: ‘designer’ activists, campaigners and philanthropists are flourishing as never before.

But there’s a puzzle: there is little evidence that celebrity endorsements contribute to higher levels of donations to their favored charities, and opinion polls suggest that celebrity advocacy has a peculiar legitimacy with the public. Most people are not persuaded by it—but they also believe that most other people are. Some minor testimony to this skepticism can be seen in the success of satires from Helen Fielding’s debut novel Cause Celeb to the Instagram site BarbieSavior.

Fans may devotedly follow a particular celebrity, but they don’t transfer their loyalties to the causes they adopt, belying the popular myth that this form of endorsement actually works. Charities and advocacy groups are well aware of this phenomenon. Some, like Médecins Sans Frontières and most church-based charities, don’t use celebrities at all, and it doesn’t affect their income.

So why do so many NGOs and campaigners persistently solicit celebrities? The answer appears to be that it isn’t about the public at all: it’s about how elites manage the public sphere in a post-democratic system.

The term ‘post-democracy’ was coined by Colin Crouch to refer to the fusion of corporate power with government, generating an elite politics based on a political-financial cycle in which money buys power and power rewards money. Post-democracy is a plausible imitation of democracy. It has a popular, consultative appearance, while the real politics of power and money consists of a continuing round of inter-personal transactions among elites.

However, political legitimacy still depends on the public sphere. Corporations can own the media, but they can’t set the agenda entirely. Into this political ecology enter designer activists and their advocacy. Their concerns may be secondary and without major political import, but they are important issues nonetheless.

Famine, genocide, epidemic disease and mass migration could suddenly surprise us and storm across the threshold of political saliency. And people—elites included—genuinely care: they are looking for ways in which they can be compassionate and active global citizens. Actors and musicians who write many of the scripts for our moral imaginations can help us with this task.

Celebrities help to frame how publics should feel, and how they should act on international humanitarian issues. When a famous actor such as Ben Affleck goes on a disaster tourist mission to Congo, what’s required from him is a performance of personal integrity and emotion. He is not expected to be an expert on the details of policy, but he is encouraged to express vicarious compassion.

Sometimes celebrities go off script, and this is where their role in post-democracy becomes most interesting. Author Dan Brockington gives examples which are simultaneously shocking and amusing: will they choke or be photographed showing visible revulsion? Will they be caught swigging champagne on a private jet en route to a refugee camp?

For the old-fashioned social justice campaigner committed to transformational social change, the unscripted howl of a celebrity is a weak peg on which to hang a revolutionary movement. But for the political and business managers of post-democracy, the unpredictability of celebrities is a useful lightning rod. The Comic Relief gala is a cornucopia of social intelligence: it’s an extraordinarily effective way of finding out what issues the public cares about, and how. The popular response to a celebrity’s radical rant is a useful means of flushing out the depth of support on that issue.

For charities and campaigning groups, celebrity sponsorship communicates a message primarily to power elites rather than to the general public. It’s a ticket to the corridors of ‘real’ politics, since designer activists and philanthropists have access, and with access comes leverage over money and potentially favorable policy decisions.

Politicians and corporate leaders may believe that associating with celebrities serves the purpose of subliminal advertising, polishing their brands with the electorate and consumers. But they also want to hang out with celebrities because they like celebrities (or perhaps because they think they do on the basis of their public personas).

Unable to effect sufficient direct pressure on their oppressors, social and political movements in the global South enlisted support from civil society and left-leaning political parties in the global North, thereby circumventing the blockages they faced at the national level. International advocates played a junior role in setting the strategic agenda.

Today, this position has been reversed. To the extent that local groups set the agenda in their relations with northern activists, they either do so in the form of resistance to post-democratic hegemony, or with an eye to how their story will resonate in the global North. The political scientist Clifford Bob has described the latter strategy as a ‘market’ of causes: only those that can successfully ‘sell’ to their Northern patrons will survive, while others will wither.

Meanwhile, many Northern advocates have become insider policy lobbyists—specialists at the business of trading influence. They set the agenda in dialogue with the politicians with whom they work—tacitly or explicitly. Indeed, there may be revolving door between political office and an advocacy position in an NGO. The goals and strategies of the campaign are set by what is mutually considered achievable in a Northern capital. The Southern groups are thereby reduced to the status of clients with tactical influence only, or are left to succumb to the sad fate of orphaned causes.

The paradigmatic cases of designer activism are deeply compatible with the circuitry of power in the post-democratic order. Hence, they campaign for more coercive intervention by the United States against the established rogue’s gallery of international villains such as Joseph Kony of the Lord’s Resistance Army or Sudanese President Omar al Bashir. They emphasize the role of private foundations as the world’s problem solvers, so that social programming is decided by the untaxed wealthy in a discretionary manner—rather than by democratic states on the basis of universal rights and entitlements.

The script of personal compassion is perfectly suited to this process—further emphasized by the way in which celebrities often perform acts of conspicuous generosity such as funding projects with their own money or adopting children into their families.

The post-democratic Northern celebrity therefore has a number of overlapping agenda-setting roles—in the ‘real politics’ of power and money, in the public arena, and in defining the nature of international philanthropy or campaigns for social justice. Meanwhile, those who try to support people’s own agendas face not only the hostility of elites; they also find that their messages are dissonant with, or drowned out by, the clamor of designer activists.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/17/designer-activism-and-post-democracy/feed/1A note on our comment policyhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/16/a-note-on-our-comment-policy/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/16/a-note-on-our-comment-policy/#respondMon, 16 May 2016 13:26:40 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3322We welcome all comments, whether critical or in support of our authors’ arguments. We only ask that commentators use their real name and engage in real discussion, which is to say, we will not post any ad hominem arguments. We also ask that commentators submit a real email address–which will not be publicly visible–in case [...]]]>We welcome all comments, whether critical or in support of our authors’ arguments. We only ask that commentators use their real name and engage in real discussion, which is to say, we will not post any ad hominem arguments. We also ask that commentators submit a real email address–which will not be publicly visible–in case we need to follow up with you on any points.
]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/16/a-note-on-our-comment-policy/feed/0Violence and the Black Male Bodyhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/11/violence-and-the-black-male-body/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/11/violence-and-the-black-male-body/#respondWed, 11 May 2016 12:47:43 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3283Prepared for the February 18 – 19, 2016 seminar, Transforming Violent Masculinities, organized by the winners of the 2015-2016 WPF Student Seminar Competition.

Since the first day that African people stepped foot on this western shore, in bondage and draped in chains, they have struggled within and against the controlling images that have been imposed on black life. Those images—accompanied by a particular narrative and reality–have and continue to have a devastating impact on the lives of African Americans.

Historically, the black body represented transgression under white authorative imagining, where the African presence in this country was widely seen as only three-fifths human. Distorted and reified images of the black body were offered as clear evidence of an inferior race and thereby treated accordingly. Perceived difference provided a strong rationale for imposing social control as well as state-sponsored violence in exercising that control. Although altered by history, today, as in the past, the transgressive black body continues to pose challenges to white authorative imagining. Today, the transgressive black body is most evidenced by the disfigured images of black men and boys in particular, whose bodies have been beaten or riddled by bullets at the hands of those holding state authority, the police. The established legacy and its contemporary articulation of black transgression in the US continue to trample on principles of racial and social justice, in response to the challenges the black body poses. Repeated instances of police brutality and murders are a mediated response by the state against the transgressive black body.

In the context of that legacy and contemporary articulation, how do we frame the issue of violent masculinities in general, and violent black masculinities in particular? Are we obligated to take into consideration the structural racial and gender oppression experienced by African American men and boys in our society? In other words, if we agree that all forms of violence represent debasement and an undermining of worth that not only compromises the human spirit but can destroy the human body, then, how are we to position black men’s and boys’ violence; especially, when they are clearly victims of structural violence as well as perpetrators of interpersonal violence? And, if violence like masculinity is learned, can violent masculinities be unlearned—are there alternative ways of demonstrating how to be human that allows for flourishing–in the absence of dismantling racial and gender structural oppression and the violence that is often accompanied?

Arguably, in one form or another, violent masculinities are essential to shaping the structural foundation of US society. Nowhere is this more evidenced than in the experience of African Americans. Historically, white authority in the form of custom and codified laws has helped to rationalize the economic, political, and cultural subordination of African American males. In that justification the popular images of the criminal-black-male, the violent-black-male, and the angry-black-male are revealed. As Jan Pieterse (1992) noted, such images are purposeful because stereotypes are social markers that play “a key role in communication, instruction, and the general transmission of culture.” For African American men and boys, stereotypic racial and gender imagery played a critical role in justifying a particular kind of social response to their very existence and, all too often, that response results in some form of state-sponsored violence aimed at social control.

Under slavery, under customary and codified laws, human rights and the sacred value of human life that are integral to principles of democracy did not apply to black bodies. African American men were forced to accept and indulge in illegal actions as a way of maintaining their lives. Christopher Booker (2000) argues that by simply attempting to satisfy the most basic of human needs, a legacy was established that would continue to define the black male presence in America. To satisfy fundamental psychological, physical, social, and spiritual needs were deemed as violations and criminal under white male authority, and violence was egregiously meted out without impunity to enforce not only customary rule, but also the rule of law. In the white authoritative imagining, the mere presence of the black male body was criminalized. The first phase of that criminalization and the violence that accompanied it was the simply act of enslaved Africans placing a foot down on the America shore. That act represented “a key formative phase of the black presence in the United States.”

Overtime, the transgressive black male body, under elite white male justice, and the punishment meted out for rule violations have become deeply woven into the very fiber of US society. Forcefully brought to America in shackles and later restricted by de facto and de jure segregation, the legacy engendered by the social construction of the criminal-black-male, the violent-black-male, and the angry-black-male persona continues to resonate. Today those images and the messages they convey are thus realized by countless numbers of African American men and boys who are excluded and marginalized from societal institutions. Yet there are those, who on a daily basis are surveiled and encounter many aspects of our formal institution of social control, the criminal justice system. They are, of course, the glaring exception to institutional exclusion and marginalization, for too many are engaged the criminal justice system as offenders. Currently, for many black men and boys the image, narrative, and reality of those stereotypes converge behind the steel doors of concrete jail cells and razor-wired prison walls across this country.

Unfortunately, for others, those images, narratives, and the reality they impose converge on the bloody streets of America, as black men and boys such as Sean Bell, Travon Martin, Ramarley Graham, Wendell Allen, Timothy Russell, Kendrec McDade, John Crawford, Ezell Ford, Dante Parker, Oscar Grant, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley, Eric Garner and Freddie Gray, lay dying at the hands of state authority. Does this constitute mass murder? Or, do the justifications for their killing provide an alternative narrative that points a finger at their individual behavior, rather than at state action?

The distorted images and narratives imposed on African American men and boys have resulted in their portrayal as inherently criminal, violent, and angry; they are seen as demons to be feared by the general public. In the cultural and social imagining of many white Americans, black men’s criminality, violence, and anger are often taken for granted and the accompanied narrative–he was breaking the law, resisting arrest, and therefore no other alternatives existed but to shoot him–is omnipresent. The disfiguring and demonizing images and narratives have aided in marginalizing the value of black men’s lives and called into question their very humanity. Today, as in the past, if black men are seen as lesser human–as inferior beings–then it becomes much easier to justify whatever action is taken against them by the state. As police officer Darren Wilson, who shot an unarmed Michael Brown eight times in Ferguson, Missouri told a grand jury: “he was like a demon.”

Within and against the sociopolitical context of African American men’s racial and gender oppression in the US, how do we begin to understand the complex issues of violent masculinities, and black masculinities in particular? White males occupy sociopolitical privilege in our society. As such, the norms that define what it means to be a man and the performance of manhood are constructed and modeled by elite white males. Those norms and models circulate through societal institutions that solidify and maintain elite white males’ power and authority, seemingly regardless of context or challenges to normative standards.

I posit that the thread that binds all masculinity is stitched with the intersecting influences of race, gender, and violence. Yet it is the uneven structural relations of power and authority that are critical to defining what it means to be a man and how manhood is performed. Positionality, whether dominate or subordinate, shapes the precise nature of what it means to be a man and how masculinity is performed in our society. Albeit racial and gender oppression, as constructed and implemented through policies and practices of social control, the obvious questions that must be raised are: whether or not the sociopolitical context in the meaning and performance of masculinity is the same regardless of racial and gender differences; or whether the meaning and performance have a completely different point of reference in the context of racial and gender oppression? And if violence is integral to the shaping of masculinity, as I believe, then how is it used in the performance of masculinity under conditions of racial and gender oppression? In other words, are violent masculinities expressed solely through the prism of interpersonal performance or are the dimensions expressed differently in the face of social exclusion and marginality. How do we weigh state-sponsored violence against that of interpersonal violence, or the intersection between the two? In the context of US history and the structural control that continues to foreshadow racial and gender inequality, it is extremely difficult to position black masculinities.

I contend that the more established theoretical references for framing violence masculinities are inadequate in addressing the structural racial and gender oppression of the transgressive black body. Whatever they are, black masculinities are not the same as white masculinities; they are not white masculinities that are somehow performed in black face. Nor are they simply reduced to “hypermasculity” with an elevated and exaggerated masculine performance that is based upon normative hegemonic models of white elite masculinity. Relations of power and the structural arrangements that maintain them, clearly indicate that this is not the case. The ways in which race, gender, and violence are socially constructed and circulate through African American men’s and boys’ daily lives reconfigure the circumstances that shapes what it means to be a man and manhood in our society.

Yet that reconfiguring is not based solely on a racial and gendered essentialism, where what it means to be a man and the performance of masculinity are the same for all African American men. There are important and often unacknowledged sociopolitical differences, such as class that also influence both the meaning and performance of black masculinities. Today, especially amid the rhetoric of “post-racialism,” there are African American men whose lives do appear to transcend or debunk socioeconomic trends or social norms that limit the capacity of other black men to realize their human potential, particular when achievement and income are linked. As a result, the signs of exclusion and marginalization are seemingly blurred when class is taken into consideration with that of race and gender. Nevertheless, structural racial and gender oppression has an omnipresence along with the social control that may be evoked. For instance, I recall the July 2009 incident, when Professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested by white police officers for attempting to enter his home, along with the incident in February 1999, when the police shot Amadou Diallo, 41-times, and who, like Gates, was merely attempting to enter his apartment building.

I have only touched upon some of the complicated dimensions of the critical intersection between race, gender, and violence that must be considered in an understanding of the shaping of black masculinities. Yet, within this understanding, I am not attempting to diminish or undermine the severity and the importance of the largely interpersonal violence that is perpetrated by African American men and boys, even under conditions of racial and gender oppression. They can and do commit heinous acts of violence, especially against themselves and African American women. But we cannot simply impose models that have not been constructed out of the realities of their particular experiences, as authoritative explanations to explain the violence that is committed. The sociopolitical context of African American men and boys’ violence is important. Violent masculinities diminish the value of all human life, and black male life in particular. I say black men’s and boys’ lives have value, that they–and we as a society–must take responsibility in demanding that the value of their lives is allowed to flourish. Only then, will we began to structure alternative ways of thinking about and demonstrating different ways for being human.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/11/violence-and-the-black-male-body/feed/0Is the Era of Great Famines Over?https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/09/is-the-era-of-great-famines-over/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/09/is-the-era-of-great-famines-over/#commentsMon, 09 May 2016 12:57:34 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3314New York Times, May 8, 2016

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — The worst drought in three decades has left almost 20 million Ethiopians — one-fifth of the population — desperately short of food. And yet the country’s mortality rate isn’t expected to increase: In other words, Ethiopians aren’t starving to death.

I’ve studied famine and humanitarian relief for more than 30 years, and I wasn’t prepared for what I saw during a visit to Ethiopia last month. As I traveled through northern and central provinces, I saw imported wheat being brought to the smallest and most remote villages, thanks to a new Chinese-built railroad and a fleet of newly imported trucks. Water was delivered to places where wells had run dry. Malnourished children were being treated in properly staffed clinics.

Compare that to the aftermath of the 1984 drought, which killed at least 600,000 people, caused the economy to shrink by nearly 14 percent and turned the name “Ethiopia” into a synonym for shriveled, glazed-eyed children on saline drips.

How did Ethiopia go from being the world’s symbol of mass famines to fending off starvation? Thanks partly to some good fortune, but mostly to peace, greater transparency and prudent planning. Ethiopia’s success in averting another disaster is confirmation that famine is elective because, at its core, it is an artifact and a tool of political repression.

In 1984, the rains failed in the midst of a civil war, pitting the military regime headed by Mengistu Haile Mariam against rebels in the northern province of Tigray and neighboring Eritrea. When food ran short, Mengistu’s government blocked trade, bombed markets and withheld emergency supplies in rebel-controlled areas.

The suffering that ensued elicited a vast outpouring of generosity from the West, brought about in part by the Live Aid concerts. But all that charity was no more than a Band-Aid, as even its instigator, the musician Bob Geldof, observed at the time. That was because war was destroying Ethiopia’s rural economy, and food aid was being redirected from civilians to soldiers and government militias.

In 1987, as the famine was receding, a group of researchers and I went to Tigray on a mission for Oxfam to study local food markets. We reached a simple conclusion: When farmers could bring foodstuffs to points of sale — when the roads were clear of army checkpoints, when markets were held at night to reduce the risk of being bombed — the local economy worked efficiently enough. With markets in operation, the production of local crops increased, and food prices fell to levels people could afford.

Ending famine required ending fighting.

The Mengistu regime collapsed in 1991. Under the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a former guerrilla turned advocate of rapid economic growth, Ethiopia enjoyed internal peace for the first time in a generation. There were localized droughts but no famines — with one notable exception.

In 1999, food shortages in the southeastern part of the country killed 29,000 people. What could have just been a crisis devolved into disaster because the government was at war with Eritrea along its northern border, and foreign donors, appalled that the government would spend its meager resources on fighting, were slow to provide food aid.

A major drought in 2002 caused hunger nationwide. But the following year, when I traveled with a team from the United Nations Children’s Fund to stricken areas in Wollo (north), Hararghe (east) and Sidama and Wollaita (south), we didn’t see the telltale canvas tents of emergency distribution centers. A vast relief effort mounted by the government and international agencies was managing to deliver at least some food to many villages, and so people were staying at home.

Some people were still going hungry, for sure, and in the worst cases children were starving, but in far smaller numbers than in the past. Our survey of child survival rates also found that outside these pockets of starvation, mortality rates weren’t rising relative to non-drought years.

By 2015, when El Niño brought the worst drought in decades, Ethiopia was better prepared than ever. In the intervening decade, the government had begun programs to help families facing food shortages with various forms of food and cash assistance. It had taken measures to mitigate the effects of droughts, rehabilitating water catchments, reforesting and building roads and clinics, especially in the countryside.

The government also had money on hand. Ethiopia is a petroleum importer, and the central bank had set aside nearly $1 billion in case oil prices rose, Finance Minister Abdulaziz Mohammed told me. But instead oil prices had plummeted, and within a few months of the drought hitting, the government had spent some $300 million on emergency relief, with more to come.

The economy will take a hit. Animals are dying of thirst, and the livelihoods of families that rely on sheep or cattle are being wiped out. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that the G.D.P. growth rate will drop to about 8.5 percent in 2015 and 2016, down from more than 10 percent in 2014. But that’s still 8.5 percent, an impressive figure. And people aren’t dying.

Some risks remain. Ethiopia’s early-warning system is designed to detect and respond to drought in farming areas, rather than, say, small cities. Urbanization, dislocation and other economic changes are happening faster than the government’s prevention and relief measures can adapt.

But these challenges are manageable, so long as there is the political will to manage them. Grimly certain that droughts will recur — and when there won’t be an oil contingency fund to tap — Mr. Mohammed has opened talks with the World Bank to devise a national drought insurance plan. This is a sensible move.

It’s also evidence that after countries have passed a certain threshold of prosperity and development, peace, political liberalization and greater government accountability are the best safeguards against famine. There is no record of people dying of famine in a democracy.

Nearly 115 million people died of starvation between 1870 and 1980, almost 90 percent of them as a result of imperial conquest, great wars or repression under totalitarian regimes, according to an analysis we conducted at the World Peace Foundation. Since then, with the end of major international conflicts and at least some measure of democratization across much of the world, starvation has receded.

So is the era of great famines finally over? Let’s just say it could be. Famine isn’t caused by overpopulation, and as Ethiopia’s experience shows, it’s not a necessary consequence of drought. Politics creates famine, and politics can stop it.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/09/is-the-era-of-great-famines-over/feed/1How to chose the next AU Chairpersonhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/06/how-to-chose-the-next-au-chairperson/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/06/how-to-chose-the-next-au-chairperson/#respondFri, 06 May 2016 19:17:54 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3310In the next few months, the African Union is set to choose its next Chairperson: the woman or man who will lead the Commission and guide the entire continent for the next four years, or possibly eight. It’s a hugely important post, and Africans should care who fills it.

The Chairperson is in charge of [...]]]>

In the next few months, the African Union is set to choose its next Chairperson: the woman or man who will lead the Commission and guide the entire continent for the next four years, or possibly eight. It’s a hugely important post, and Africans should care who fills it.

The Chairperson is in charge of realizing Africa’s ‘Agenda 2063’, and implementing all the current programmes of the AU, including overseeing the African peace and security architecture, the African governance architecture, and ensuring that the AU is adequately financed for the tasks it needs to do. Five years ago the AU spelled out five criteria for choosing the candidate: education; experience; leadership; achievement; and vision and strategy. That’s a start.

But Africa shouldn’t be content with a person who meets the standards. Africans should demand the very best person for the job. And a truly demanding job it is too. It demands visionary leadership, political credibility and acumen, and managerial skills. It is not a job for a political crony, but for a person who can truly reach out and inspire the African people.

The Chairperson is selected by member states at the Assembly of Heads of State and Government (the summit) which this year will be in Kigali in June.

But the African Union is more than an inter-governmental organization. It stemmed from the Pan African Movement, which was a people’s movement. Africa’s independence era leaders, such as Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and Julius Nyerere, all arose from a continent-wide movement of trade unions, teachers, intellectuals, peasants and civil society. The African Union is not just a multilateral organization, it is an aspirational union, a representation of the common demands of ordinary people across the continent for unity, dignity and emancipation.

This year, the United Nations is also selecting a new Secretary General. As with the AU, the decision is ultimately in the hands of its member states. But the UN has recognized that the legitimacy of the organization ultimately rests on its standing with the people of the world. So, the candidates for the top job have been required to attend public hearings, to answer questions from the world’s citizens, directly or online. They need to explain to the people why they want the job, what they intend to achieve, how they plan to pursue the major goals of the UN.

The AU has a stronger historic claim to be a people’s organization than the UN. The Pan African Movement has diplomatic status at the AU (a role that it isn’t currently filling). The Constitutive Act contains foundational commitments to upholding constitutionalism, democracy, human rights and peace, and to preventing atrocities. AU has the Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC). It has the Pan African Parliament, which is the closest approximation to the voice of the people within the AU system. The Pan African Parliamentarians, in their role as the representatives of the African citizens, should discharge their responsibility by assessing the credentials of the candidates. What better role could there be for the ECOSOCC and the Pan African Parliament than to call the candidates for the top job for hearings to present their candidacies and explain what they plan to do?

The AU could also use social media to reach a much wider African audience, so that people across the continent can pose questions to their next leaders.

Most of the discussion about who should lead the AU has come down to the question of which part of the continent the candidate comes from. We seem to expect that the AU leadership is chosen through a sort of rotational system, whereby each region has its turn. While there is some validity to the principle of rotating the Chairperson across the different regions, so that all Africans have a buy-in, this should not be at the expense of choosing the best candidate. Strictly adhering to the regional principle could readily become a conduit for cronyism.

The debate should be about how Africa can select a chief executive who is a leader of global stature, who upholds and protects the vision and principles formulated in the Constitutive Act, and who represents Africa on the world stage.

The next AU Chairperson must be able to tackle the continent’s most serious challenges. With the continent these include negotiating peace agreements, dispatching peacekeepers, advancing regional integration, and promoting the principles of democratic constitutionalism. There are also transregional and global debates in which Africa’s voice needs to be heard. One of these is engaging with the Arab countries and the Europeans on the ‘shared spaces’ of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea and the crises associated with them. Another is reforming the UN and enhancing Africa’s place within the UN, including the question of a permanent African seat at the Security Council.

The AU will be at the forefront of tackling these and other challenges, and the Chairperson must be up to the job—from day one. Africa does not lack the highly experienced and capable leaders who can master these tasks, and assemble a dynamic and capable team of advisors and lieutenants able to ensure that the Commission fulfills its roles. The next Chairperson, whoever he or she may be, must be one of those experienced and capable leaders: somebody with the breadth of knowledge and skill, global reputation, courage and well-earned respect. We need the very best.

If getting the best means delaying the selection, and making the choice next January in Addis Ababa rather than this June in Kigali, so be it. The AU will be stronger for an open and consultative selection process, and the vibrant public debate that will go with it.

The choice of the Chairperson of the AU is a continental leadership challenge. Africa won its liberation when it replaced entitlement to office based on birth and colour of skin, with the career open to talents, not identity. Africa should take this principle forward by ensuring that the choice of the new Chair of the AU Commission is selected by a new, consultative and transparent process, that draws on the AU’s Pan African heritage and its consultative and representative institutions.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/06/how-to-chose-the-next-au-chairperson/feed/0All Perfectly Legalhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/05/all-perfectly-legal/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/05/all-perfectly-legal/#commentsThu, 05 May 2016 15:36:04 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3308Why Corruption is Only Part of the Story in the Misgovernment and Immiseration of Africa

Africa loses at least $50 billion a year—and probably much, much more than that—perfectly lawfully. About 60 percent of this loss is from aggressive tax avoidance by multinational corporations, which organize their accounts so that they make their profits in tax havens, where they pay little or no tax. Much of the remainder is from organized crime with a smaller amount from corruption. This was the headline finding of the High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa, headed by former South African President Thabo Mbeki, a year ago

This amount is the same or smaller than international development assistance ($52 bn per year) or remittances ($62 bn). If we take the accumulated stock of these illicit financial flows since 1970 and factor in the returns on this capital, Africa has provided the rest of the world with $1.7 trillion, at a conservative estimate. Africa is a capital exporter.

The rest of the world didn’t take much notice of the Mbeki Panel’s findings, until the Panama Papers revealed the extent to which this is just part of a global phenomenon. The rich aren’t being taxed. The rest of us pay for everything.

The OECD calls the phenomenon base erosion (referring to the emasculation of the tax base of the affected countries) and profit shifting. The beneficiaries are a small fraction of the world’s wealthiest one percent, and the secrecy jurisdictions (a.k.a. tax havens) where they sequester their money. These locations include the City of London, numerous British overseas territories, Switzerland, and new entrants to the global business of looking after the monies of the hyper-wealthy and ordinarily wealthy, who would prefer not to pay tax. Countries including Mauritius, the Seychelles, Botswana and Ghana are seeking to enter this competition.

And the vast majority of this is perfectly legal.

Two hundred years ago the slave trade was legal. One hundred years ago colonial occupation and exploitation were legal. This time the immiseration is done by accountants.

This dimension of unethical financial activity isn’t captured by Transparency International (TI) and its Corruption Perceptions Index. That index is, as it says, a measurement of perceptions. But of what, by whom? As the UN Economic Commission for Africa recently observed, it relies on asking key power players in a nation’s economy what they think of the level of corruption. Many of those are foreign investors. Unsurprisingly, a country like Zambia will rank high on corruption – 76 out of 168. And Switzerland will rank low – number 7. But the perfectly legal transfer of the wealth of Africa to Europe isn’t captured by this index. As TI notes, “Many ‘clean’ countries have dodgy overseas records.” Consider this: the number one destination for Zambian copper exports is Switzerland, which in 2014 accounted for 59.5 percent of the country’s copper exports. This figure caused something of an outcry, as Switzerland’s own imports scarcely contained mention of copper at all. Had the African country’s main exports just vanished into thin air? The 2015 figures suggest that in fact much of these exports were destined for China (31 percent) – but even so, Switzerland remains number one (34 percent).

The answer to where the money goes, is accountants’ alchemy. International corporations present their books in such a way that they pay as little tax as possible in either Zambia or China. And they don’t pay much in Switzerland either – because the Swiss don’t demand it.

Suddenly the ranking of Switzerland, 69 places ahead of Zambia in the honesty league, looks a bit suspect. But it’s all perfectly legal.

From a Zambian point of view, what counts as ‘corruption’ is defined by the rich and powerful. When their country is robbed blind by clever accounting tricks, against which their government and people have no recourse, it is just the operation of a free market controlled – as free markets so often are – by corporations that have enough power to set the rules.

Another little noticed but significant feature of illicit financial flows from Africa is that there are occasional reverse flows. The movements back into African countries aren’t as big as the outflows, but they are important. What is happening here is “round-tripping”: spiriting funds away to a safe place so they can be brought back, with their origins unexplained, and no questions needing to be asked.

The same multinational corporation that is defrauding an African country can pay money into the offshore account of one of its political leaders. Or that leader can whisk funds away by other means. Our main concern here isn’t the money invested in real estate in France, yachts or fast cars, or foreign business ventures. These are personal insurance policies in case things go wrong at home, or tickets to the global elite club. Rather, our concern is the cash kept liquid, to be brought back home when needed.

This money is brought back to fix elections, to buy loyalties and in sundry other ways to secure leaders in power. These are political budgets par excellence: the funds used for discretionary political purposes by political business operators.

In the United States, almost any kind of political funding you can think of can be done in a perfectly legal manner, given a smart enough accountant and lawyer. Political Action Committees can spend as much money as they like in support of a candidate. Campaign finance is essentially without a ceiling.

In Africa, political finance laws range from lax to non-existent. Spending vast amounts of money on winning political office – or staying in office — offends no law. The monetization of politics is one of the biggest transformations in African political life of the last thirty years. It is generating vast inequalities, consolidating a political-commercial elite which has a near-monopoly on government office, fusing corporate business with state authority, and making public life subject to the laws of supply and demand. Political markets are putting state-building into reverse gear, transforming peace-making into a continual struggle against a tide of mercenarised violence, and — most perniciously – turning elections into an auction of loyalties. Political money is discrediting democracy. Some of the transactions that constitute Africa’s political markets are blatantly corrupt, but many are simply the routine functioning of political systems based on exchange of political services for material reward.

Yes there is corruption in Africa, just as there is corruption in international trade and finance. But when Prime Minister David Cameron opens the Anti-Corruption Summit next week on 12 May, we should be aware that the greatest fraud perpetrated on the majority of the world’s citizens—notably those living in Africa—is all perfectly legal.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/05/05/all-perfectly-legal/feed/1From The Hague to Abidjan: Whither Transitional Justice in Côte d’Ivoire?https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/04/21/from-the-hague-to-abidjan-whither-transitional-justice-in-cote-divoire/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/04/21/from-the-hague-to-abidjan-whither-transitional-justice-in-cote-divoire/#respondThu, 21 Apr 2016 13:26:08 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3305The past few weeks have seen important developments in the realm of international criminal justice. On March 24th, the ICTY convicted Radovan Karadzic of genocide and other crimes against humanity over atrocities committed by Bosnian Serb forces between 1992 and 1995. The same week, the International Criminal Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber confirmed 70 charges against [...]]]>The past few weeks have seen important developments in the realm of international criminal justice. On March 24th, the ICTY convicted Radovan Karadzic of genocide and other crimes against humanity over atrocities committed by Bosnian Serb forces between 1992 and 1995. The same week, the International Criminal Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber confirmed 70 charges against former Lord’s Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen. The ICC also for the first time convicted a military commander, Jean-Pierre Bemba, for crimes of his subordinates and for using sexual violence as a weapon of war. In more troubling news, the ICC in early April dropped its case against deputy president of Kenya, William Ruto and radio host Joshua arap Sang, ending a tortuous case marked by incidence of witness intimidation and extensive political meddling.

However, the Court’s highest profile case to date remains ongoing. On Monday, March 7, the trial of Laurent Gbagbo resumed in the The Hague. Gbagbo is the first ex-head of state to appear before the tribunal. The former president of Côte d’Ivoire and his former youth minister, Charles Blé Goudé, have been charged with crimes against humanity that occurred during the country’s post-electoral crisis of 2010-2011. In the five months that followed the election, clashes between rival forces led to over 3,000 deaths and displaced at least 500,000.

Not everyone is happy with Gbagbo’s extradition to The Hague. A number of local justice advocates have argued that he should have been brought before a regional court, such as the Extraordinary African Chambers set up in Senegal to try former Chadian president Hissène Habré. The country also remains divided along political lines: many of Gbagbo’s and Blé Goudé’s supporters continue to view them as national heroes. Accusations of biased justice have haunted the ICC proceedings from the start. Although both sides of the conflict have been implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity, the court decided to limit its initial prosecutions to crimes committed by pro-Gbagbo forces, primarily in the capital Abidjan. Although ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in January 2016 announced that the Prosecutor’s Office has intensified its investigations into Ouattara’s allies, no charges have been issued to date.

With attention now focused on The Hague, it is important to take a closer look at justice and reconciliation processes within Côte d’Ivoire itself. Gbagbo’s trial may well last as long as three or four years. Without understating the symbolic and political importance of the proceedings, they are unlikely to heal the wounds left behind by the 2010-2011 crisis and the preceding years of internal conflict. If anything, the trial in The Hague will likely reinforce the claims of Ivorian nationalists that President Ouattara remains a puppet to foreign powers.

Côte d’Ivoire has undergone a remarkable economic recovery over the past five years. Foreign investment has skyrocketed. Thousands of former fighters have been demobilized. In October 2015, Ouattara was re-elected for a second term in a largely peaceful election. Yet the legacies of violent conflict to some extent remain unaddressed. Although a number of domestic transitional justice efforts were set in motion in the aftermath of the crisis, they have been hampered by insufficient resources, political interference and weaknesses in the Ivorian judicial system. Few of Ouattara’s supporters have faced any legal or political repercussions for their involvement in the crisis – even though a UN Commission of Inquiry as well as a national investigation found both sides responsible for atrocities.

Reparations, Truth and Reconciliation

After assuming office in 2011, President Ouattara heeded the recommendation of the UN Commission of Inquiry and established a Commission for Dialogue, Truth and Reconciliation (CDVR), which was mandated to identify the root causes of the conflict and possible ways the country could move ahead with reconciliation. The Commission gathered testimonies from over 72,000 Ivorians. However, the scope of its mandate was not clearly defined and its budget of $15 million too limited. Victims also questioned the commission’s impartiality. Its final report, presented to Ouattara in December 2014, has yet to be made public, and its recommendation have not been publicly debated.

Instead, the government created a successor institution, the National Commission for Reconciliation and Indemnification of Victims (CONARIV), which was tasked with overseeing a reparations program for victims of abuses committed between 1990 and 2012. CONARIV has made progress compiling a list of victims and determining who will be eligible and how much they will receive. Yet initial round of reparations were already distributed before the official guidelines had been completed, potentially raising unrealistic expectations among victims. The unclear division of responsibilities between CONARIV and the National Program on Social Cohesion, charged with implementing the reparations program, represents an additional challenge.

It is of course questionable whether a fully functioning truth commission and a public debate about its recommendations inevitably would have furthered social healing and reconciliation. Past experiences with truth and reconciliation commissions show that it is difficult to establish benchmarks to evaluate their success. Research on transitional justice effectiveness has for the most part focused on macro-level outcomes rather than societal and community responses, and yielded divergent conclusions. However, existing studies do suggest that positive outcomes hinge on broader institutional reforms, complementary accountability mechanisms and extensive civil society engagement. Most civil society organizations in Côte d’Ivoire are seen as aligned with one of the major political parties, which has politicized their involvement. A number of case studies also highlight that public outreach is essential to successful transitional justice processes – an element that has been missing in the Ivorian case.

Domestic prosecutions

During his first term, President Ouattara also established the Commission Nationale D’Enquete (CNE) to perform non-judicial investigations, and the Cellule Spéciale d’Enquête (re-named Cellule Spéciale d’Enquête et d’Investigations, or CSEI), which was tasked with launching judicial proceedings for the crimes committed during the post-election crisis. This was an important step: the country’s justice system had been severely weakened by years of instability and conflict that preceded the 2010-2011 electoral crisis. However, the CSEI’s investigations have repeatedly been hampered by severe resource shortages and recurring threats of closure. Only sustained international and domestic civil society pressure ensured the extension of its mandate. Delays in formal appointments of investigative staff undermined the cell’s ability to investigate crimes committed by pro-Ouattara forces beyond the capital. The March 2015 conviction of Simone Gbagbo and 82 former Gbagbo supporters further reinforced the perception of victor’s justice. These legal proceedings were also criticized by human rights advocates for not conforming to international legal standards.

Reports emerged in mid-2015 indicating that the cell was conducting investigations into key military officials who supported President Ouattara during the conflict. Some sources suggest that eight former Forces Armées des Forces Nouvelles (FAFN) leaders have been indicted to date. However, the exact number of pro-Ouattara officials currently under investigation remains unclear, and there seems to have been little progress on the prosecutions of the twenty pro-Ouattara soldiers accused of committing crimes by the CNE report. Continued arbitrary arrests and the detention of political prisoners further puts into question the impartiality and legitimacy of the Ivorian justice system. Amnesty International in 2015 identified more than 200 former Gbagbo supporters currently held without charges. Additionally, extortion by security forces at checkpoints remains pervasive in rural areas western and northern Côte d’Ivoire, although to a lesser degree than in the immediate aftermath of the crisis.

Land reform

On a broader level, crucial legal and public sector reforms have been delayed. The role of land conflicts in spurring intercommunal violence in Côte d’Ivoire has been widely documented. However, no comprehensive land reform has been enacted to date. During his first term, Ouattara focused on implementing a 1998 rural land law that aimed at converting customary claims to land certificates and eventually legal titles. However, the procedures foreseen by the law have proven complicated and expensive for ordinary Ivorians to access. According to Human Rights Watch, only 978 certificates had been issued by May 2015 – out of an estimated 500,000 needed in the whole country. The burden for mediating land disputes remains on customary chiefs and local administration officials, whose decisions are often difficult to enforce and frequently discriminate against women. Fraudulent land sales are rarely prosecuted, and land dispossession still drives inter-communal conflict in the Western parts of the country. Mitchell (2015) suggests that these cocoa-growing regions, which witnessed some of the worst violence during the 2010-2011 crisis, remain in a precarious state of “neither war nor peace.” The international donor community has been slow to recognize land reform as key to long-term peacebuilding, and perhaps focused on national-level processes at the expense of local land relations and tensions.

Looking forward

As Loyle and Davenport (2016) note, much of the scholarship on transitional justice generally assumes that TJ mechanisms such as prosecutions and truth commissions are adopted with the goal of liberal democratic change. However, this is not necessarily the case: TJ processes are often used for strategic political gain. Looking at Eastern Europe, Grodsky (2010) for example argues that transitional justice is a political commodity that can be traded for other political goods, rather than a process implemented to advance normative goals. The case of Côte d’Ivoire exemplifies how judicial proceedings can be manipulated and undermined by restricting access, delaying key reforms, withholding resources and abusing executive powers. Applying Loye and Davenport’s indicators for identifying transitional injustice, it becomes clear that the key challenge in Côte d’Ivoire has not been continued high-level violence or authoritarian legitimation, but the lack of openness and equal participation in justice processes – as well as a post-conflict narrative that downplays the need for legal and transitional justice.

What does this mean for Côte d’Ivoire’s long-term stability and democratic consolidation? A 2014 survey by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative revealed low levels of societal and institutional trust throughout the country. 64% of respondents reported that they had no or little confidence in the justice system. Almost two-thirds argued that the government and the national justice system had little or no will to hold perpetrators of the election violence accountable. Despite considerable economic progress and democratic gains in recent years, these responses suggest a difficult path ahead. The Ivorian government has so far prioritized economic growth and reconstruction. In contrast to the extensive effort to rebuild the country’s economy, infrastructure, and the military, the mechanisms for achieving reconciliation have proven much weaker.

However, the risks associated with flawed justice and continued land conflicts are real. Given the government’s fragile shift toward accountability over the past year, the country’s donors and international partners should continue pushing for independent and impartial justice processes and consolidate existing gains. However, the Ivorian government faces considerable constraints in adopting a more assertive stance: its de facto control over FAFN commanders in the country’s west and north is tenuous, and a persistent push to hold them accountable in the domestic courts may raise fears of renewed violence. On the other hand, further outsourcing criminal justice to the international community risks reinforcing the pro-Gbagbo narrative that Ouattara is bending to foreign interests. No matter what happens in The Hague over the coming months, democratic progress in Côte d’Ivoire may ultimately depend on the capacity of political elites to grapple with the drivers of violence – such as precarious civilian control over the military and long-standing clashes between land tenure regimes and conceptions of citizenship.

One thing really struck me in the invitation letter to the World Peace Foundation seminar on Transforming Violent Masculinities, it was the following “Acknowledging that most men are not violent… men perpetrate a majority of violent acts around the world”. So, most men are not violent, yet despite this we are clearly more violent than women. It is an accurate statement and a door-opener to some of the complexities and tensions we face when trying pin-down the causality of men’s violence. Let me turn to my own research to help discuss some of these challenges.

I have been studying young men in youth gangs in Latin America and Caribbean, mainly in the poor neighborhoods of Medellín, Colombia, for the better part of a decade. I have sat down and talked to lots of young men in gangs, some whom had left gangs, and even their girlfriends and mothers. I have also spoken to young men who didn’t join gangs that came from the very same neighbourhoods and conditions of poverty. Is it possible to trace their trajectories to male adulthood and the processes of socialisation that led some into the gang whist not others? Yes, I think it is. Is it possible to draw up a neat list of causal factors to explain these processes? Well, that is a little more difficult, but it is something we should debate.

I will lay out some of these debates as I see them in this ‘memo’. The idea is to be provocative and to promote the co-construction of knowledge between us during the seminar. First, I will discuss gang violence where masculinities and urban exclusion intersect; second, I will attempt to add some texture to barrio masculinities; third, I will ask why some young men join the gang and become violent; and finally, I will try and answer why majority of young men do not join the gang.

Gang violence at the intersection of masculinities and urban exclusion

The homicide rate in Latin America and Caribbean is the highest in the world. Geographically, this violence concentrates in the poor barrios, or neighbourhoods of the region’s cities. The youth gangs found at the urban margins are paradigmatic of this violence, and so ubiquitous that they have even been perceived as a collective movement and in revolutionary terms (Baird & Rodgers 2015; Beall et al. 2013). Neither gangs nor violence show signs abating in Latin America, propelling the ‘gang issue’ up the political pecking order, where they feature heavily in populist rhetoric and sensationalist media reports, and recently have even been labelled as ‘terrorists’ (Wolf 2015).

Whilst conditions of socio-economic exclusion have been associated with gang prevalence, gang formation itself cannot be ascribed to a single nor determinant factor, but rather to a range of correlational but not clearly identified causal factors such as; organised crime, drug trafficking, the proliferation of firearms, weak governance and rapid urbanisation. Some contend that the strongest correlates of gang membership occur at a subjective level, including exposure to domestic and community violence, delinquency and drugs (Higginson et al. 2015: 6). However, precise accounts of gang formation should be critically appraised as they can emerge in a variety of ways and circumstances.

Despite the caveats posed by gang complexity, there is a remarkable consistency to gang demography across the region: poor young men overwhelming make up gang membership. Even a cursory inspection shows that the ‘poor, male, youth’ profile remains robust outside of Latin America. Although masculinities alone cannot account for gang membership, it is clear that processes of male socialisation are central to understanding why gangs persist. However, empirically grounded research into ‘gang masculinities’ in the region is rare.

The texture of barrio masculinities

Masculinities are multifaceted and situationally mutable. Men are not permanently committed to one particular pattern of masculinity. It would be an exhausting project for even the most macho man to perform machismo all of the time. For example, in Mexico and Central America a man may perpetrate street violence but caringly look after his children in private and public (Gutmann 1996; Lancaster 1992). I myself have interviewed gang members who appeared to be caring fathers, sons and brothers, but who also intimidated, robbed and murdered on the streets. Likewise, even the most progressive male youths I spoke to in Medellín’s poor neighbourhoods occasionally showed a flicker of machismo, especially when talking with or about women.

This indicates that the micro-level practices and textures of barrio masculinity can be confounding and contradictory. It is important not to idly reproduce male stereotypes, impose narratives or as Alves (2009) suggests, ‘make’ masculinity from the outside, but we must be unambiguous in our critique of patriarchy. It is clear that machismo is the widespread and principle form of sexism, misogyny and patriarchy in Latin America (Gutmann 2003; Valenzuela Arce 2010). Theidon reflects upon such conundrums whilst researching demobilising combatants in Colombia: “militarised masculinity [is a] fusion of certain practices and images of maleness with the use of weapons, the exercise of violence, and the performance of an aggressive and frequently misogynist masculinity. While I do not deny the diversity that exists within the group of former combatants with whom I work, neither can I deny the hegemonic masculinity these men have in common” (Theidon 2007: 5).

The tension between the diversities and hegemonies of masculinity adds complexity to gang membership. However, it also adds explanatory power: the cultural repertoire of machismo at a macro level filters through to local gendered orders in Medellín, which frames the strategies boys and men use to negotiate the masculine terrains of their everyday lives. Boys’ and men’s expression of masculinity is situationally specific, as such we can speak of a barrio masculinity, but one that remains connected to broader societal norms. The gang is a conduit for social relations, and a gendered way for disenfranchised youths to inhabit the city, which is why it is vital to understand violence at the intersection between class and masculinity.

Becoming violent: A masculine logic of gang membership

A short explanation

The conspicuous consumption and riches of gangsta glamour standout as preferential pathways to manhood against the backdrop of exclusion in poor neighbourhoods across Latin American and Caribbean. Therefore, the sensible question to ask would be, why wouldn’t you join a gang in those conditions? I often try to put myself in the shoes of the young men I spoke to, what would I do in their position at the age of 14 or 15, would I join the gang too?

What I am suggesting is that there is a logic to the ganging process when the conditions are right. Young men strategically negotiate a social world of violence and exclusion in search of desired outcomes, and when doing so the gang often appears to be a good opportunity or their ‘first way out’ of poverty, as Pepe, a youth who worked at a community-based organisation in Medellín explained:

It’s easier to join gangs because there’s economic motivation. I think that when a boy has difficulties at home [they] run out of ideas and think ‘what am I going to do?’ An opportunity [to join a gang] seems like a good one in that situation, the first way out, their first option (11/04/2008).

To be a ‘respected man’ in these settings, as described by one youth, is closely associated with hegemonic masculinities: “being strong, bringing home money, being a protector, having power, being respected, being a womaniser, a chauvinist, macho, brash (sic)”(Sammy, 03/06/2008). The gang emerges as a localised contestation of emasculation, a way of protecting their dignity, the last refuge of the poor.

Young men ‘instrumentalise’ gangs to contest emasculation

I always asked gang members the question ‘why did you join the gang?’ What stood out from their responses was the pragmatic use of the gang as a reputational and asset accumulating project. The prospect of being poor and unemployed often evoked a deep fear of being looked down upon by the community, as one gang member said “You’ve got to be able to support the family, your kid an’ all that. You need to have a job in a business or something like that so the community doesn’t see you like a tramp, an undesirable who does nothin’, that’s shit. It would be cool to have a good job” (El Peludo, 03/04/2008).

For many young men, the status and asset accumulation through the gang had a dual purpose; it was ‘instrumentalised’ by to contest indignity and emasculation, but it also served as an outlet for youthful ambition, a way for boys to become a ‘successful’ adult. Gangs are often perceived by the young men who enter them as sites of opportunity, which outweighed the risks of joining. Gangs can be outlets for ambition, empowering and socially cohesive for their members, spaces where disenfranchised youths can ‘subversively recodify’ any feelings of emasculation (Foucault, 2000: 122-123)[1]. Joining the gang should not be understood as aberrant or maverick, but rather as a logical use of agency for excluded boys in settings that restrict legal masculinisation opportunities.

Here I will add a note of caution. Whilst we should be critical of the conditions that give rise to gangs, we should also be weary of idealising them as an emancipatory project given the negative impact of violence and crime upon populations living in the poorest neighbourhoods, and their capacity to reproduce and entrench local machismo and patriarchy as a whole.

Aspiration and masculine capital: ‘In the end there’s nothing like being in a gang’

Pepe: Imagine a kid who goes hungry at home and they see the local duro who’s got a motorbike, designer shoes, girls, expensive clothes, respect, recognition, power. So of course the young kids round here say ‘wow, this is the ticket!’ (11/04/2008).

It is unsurprising then that almost everyone I spoke to in Medellín’s barrios could name the local duro, but their notoriety or ‘fame’ depends upon the accumulation and display of girls, guns, clothes, respect, et cetera, which I term masculine capi­tal. The gang is the stand out supplier this capital and hence a local standard bearer of masculinity, which makes them attractive sites of male status-building for boys. I believe that gangs also occupy significant ontological ground in defining barrio masculinity for male youths, which was often reflected in their narratives: “The gang is famous and that inflates your ego. In the end there’s nothing like being in a gang, and then we’ve got girls on our motorbikes ‘with the pussy on the back’ as the saying goes” (Havana 12/06/2008). One gang member demonstrated how the gang inflated his esteem by saying rather poetically “from up here [on the drugs corner overlooking the city] we’re just like the bourgeoisie” (El Peludo 03/04/2008).

Getting the girl

I recognise that gang members relationships with their girlfriends and partners are complex (Baird 2015), but here I want to look at them from the perspective of youths joining the gang. Almost all of the gang members I spoke to talked about ‘getting the girl’, which required making a name for themselves in the gang. On nights out in the city I witnessed gangs attracting noticeable numbers of girls and young women who would become their mosas (from hermosas, beautiful), their weekend girlfriends (the reasons for which we can debate). The hetero-normative triumph of ‘getting the girl’ was a key masculine capital and extremely powerful in displaying masculine success for these young men.

Yeah, well [I joined the gang] for a lot of reasons. I was looking for easy money, for luxuries, women. Women today are only interested in material things, to be with a duro to feel like they’re with someone with power. Gang members go for the young girls who want to go to parties (Aristizabal 15/07/2008).

We should be cautious not to blame vulnerable young women for gang membership, but there is clearly a need to grasp the dynamics of their interactions with gang members better. Little is understood in Latin America about why so many girls and young women are seemingly attracted to gang members when the risks of sexual abuse and rape are widespread, nor how this might contribute to cycles of gang membership and gang culture.

How gang violence shapes male identity

The modus operandi of youth gangs in Medellín revolves around territorial control for retail drugs sales, racketeering and extortion, what Glebeek and Koonings call the ‘micro-monopolies’ of the street (2015: 4). Controlling drug corners requires the the use of violence against rival gang encroachment, whilst extortion requires the systematic intimidation of the local population. This external use of violence is reflected within the internal machinations of the gang, as one twelve year old gang member explained; the duro reaches his position of gang leadership by being elmás malo, the ‘badest’, capable of publically displayed and often spectacular violence. This means eschewing any traces femininity or non-hegemonic masculinity such as being a loquita, a pussy. But a duro is not a simple thug, they must be dextrous enough to avoid arrest, being killed, and demonstrate good management of gang finances by keeping the money rolling in for the troops (Junior Carrito, 19/06/2008).

The creation of duro ‘badness’ is a process of identity formation and becoming, which promotes the “strategic essentialisation” of masculinity (after Garot 2015: 158). Being a duro requires the essentialisation of machismo, a process carried out within the gang. This reflects soldiering, where the capacity for violence is a rite of passage and a definitive assertion of male adulthood. Semiotically, the gun represents ‘badness’ and the capacity for violence “Where picking up a gun for the first time gives you power”, implies “putting on the big trousers”, and “feels like sitting on a throne” (El Peludo 03/04/2008; Notes, 16/07/2008; Rasta, 12/11/11). The mutually reinforcing relationship between gang violence and machismo is an interesting point for further debate.

Socialisation into the gang

The view that socialisation processes are central to gang formation is empirically supported (Atkinson-Sheppard, 2015; Gayle & Mortis, 2010; Rodgers & Baird, 2015). That said, this is far from a straightforward process. The causality of gang membership is notoriously slippery, there are no cut-and-dry determinants to gang membership to explain why some youth socialise into, or conversely, away from gangs. Of the gang members I interviewed in Medellín, some displayed notable agency when joining the gang, albeit with diverse motivations. At times they were driven by ambition, and at others by desperation connected to poverty or challenging family environments. Yet others showed little agency, going with the flow of peer groups and unwittingly ending up in gangs. “When we joined we were just kids, stealing a few things now and then, we weren’t an armed group nor nothin’, but from one moment to the next we turned into a gang” (El Loco 03/06/2008). Some felt swept into gangs by the sheer omnipresence of violence and conflict in their neighbourhoods, where they had “encountered death many times. Just by living in this neighbourhood you’re part of the war” (Ceferino 05/11/11). This often made it difficult for them to clearly explain why they had joined the gang, and as one gang member suggested, even the “best kids who’ve got everything at home and have other opportunities” can end up in the gang (Armando 18/06/2008).

It is clear that aspects of socialisation are pivotal to entry into the gang. 35 out of 40 gang members interviewed referred explicitly to the importance of friends, family and street contacts in this process, often entering the gang incrementally “getting sucked in little by little” as “the energy of the other person begins to stick to you” (Jesus, 15/07/2008; Tino, 20/11/11), rather than as a single-step process from outsider to insider. Tellingly, none of the gang members interviewed joined a gang outside of their local community confirming the notion of the ‘organic’ gang. Street socialisation is integral to gang reproduction, constituted through life-long friends, contemporaries and family in the host neighbourhood.

Staying out of the gang

Gang-work: A job for ‘real’ men

The Medellín gang is predominantly a homosocial ‘enactment’ (Kimmel, 2004), a space of male socialisation and hetero-normativity, a site of essentialised machismo. Non-conformitive identities such as homosexuality, femininities and women are broadly excluded “because of the chauvinist gang culture, men won’t let them in” (Jose 20/07/2008).

It was telling that across the eight-year span of my fieldwork I did not encounter one (openly) homosexual male, girl or woman who was a ‘core member’ of a gang; by that I mean they did not take part in gang violence systematically nor did they have significant control over the gang’s economic activities. ‘Gang-work’ related to money and violence was definitively ‘men’s work’, controlled by male gang members and duros but never a dura, demonstrating the predominance of male homo-socialisation in gangland violence. More women are found in gangs like the maras in Central American but this was not the case in Medellín. I am not suggesting that gangs never engage with girls and women, far from it. Within the gang their roles were also gendered, tending to be more ‘administrative’ such as transporting drugs, money, arms, and munitions around communities, football stadiums or in and out of jails, or working as informants or collectors of extortion monies. (Although Riaño-Alcalá did find evidence for violent women in Medellín’s poor neighbourhoods [2006]). They were also mothers, sisters and wives, but gangs’ interactions with girls and women were most visible in social spaces such as the abovementioned mosas or short-term girlfriends.

Why don’t more boys join the gang if there is so much masculine capital to be had?

There has been significant scholarly effort to understand violence as a necessarily reproductive and even epidemiological phenomenon, however, violence is complex and not necessarily self-perpetuating. Counter-intuitively, violence can be interruptive as well as reproductive. The majority young men in Medellín’s poor barrios do not actually join gangs[2], and the question is still open as to what percentage of those within a gang are ‘core members’ and systematically violent. The question of why most poor youths do not join gangs or why violence is not more reproductive is often overlooked by gang researchers. These are important questions Gary Barker asked over a decade ago (2005). I would posit, many of the answers we are looking for in terms of reducing gang violence actually lie with the under-studied majority of non-gang and non-violent youth. We may even find some answers if we research why some gang members are not violent whilst others are? Certainly we should ask, if the gang is such a compelling site for manhood in these contexts why do the majority of youths not join up? Allow me put some ideas forward:

There is always a range of competing pathways to male adulthood and many youths I interviewed, gang members and non-gang members alike, also respected men who earned money legally. The gang clearly stands out as an option, or even the ‘best option’ for many boys, but it will always be a minority employer amidst a multitude of pathways to manhood in these communities.

The non-gang youths I spoke to gave a number of explanations for not joining gangs, which included; positive influences at home, in school, at church or in other communal spaces such as youth organisations. These acted as buffers to gang entry by fostering a moral rejection of the gang and helping them to socialise away from gang circles.

As a whole non-gang youths’ personality traits were broadly hetero-normative, but they were less likely to fit into the macho gang frame. A number of these young men were self-confessed ‘geeks’ or ‘swots’, some were particularly religious, others had been rigorously disciplined at home and were teased as ‘mummies boys’. Two were homosexual. It seems intuitive then that some boys and young men will be ‘put off’ by the machismo and dangers of gang-life that others perceive as attractive masculine capital. One youth explained that he did not seek revenge murder of his friend by a gang because “I’ve never had the mettle for that stuff, I mean, I’ve never been capable of responding violently to anyone. I’m not the type to try and put one over on anyone” (Pelicorto 10/06/2008). Ergo, the spectre of gang related violence including death, incarceration, injury, trauma, and machismo itself, actually prevent many youths from joining.

References

Alves, J.A., 2009. Narratives of Violence: The White ImagiNation and the Making of Black Masculinity in City of God. Sociedade e cultura, 12(2), pp.301–310.

[1] Foucault talks of the ‘subversive recodification’ of power relations as a micro-level subjective process.

[2] In a survey I conducted in a local school, 6 out of 43 male youths (17%) with an average age 17 self-identified as gang members. Locals estimated that 5-10% of the male youth population were gang members, another 2013 study identified 11.3% ‘aggressors’.

Scientific evidence from a range of disciplines confirms the close connections between early developmental processes and subsequent behavior. Thus, traumatic stress in early childhood can have enduring effects, that in extreme cases may be irreversible despite later remedial or attenuating behavior (Shonkoff et al). A well known example of this coupling between experience and conduct is the case of Romanian orphans, so severely neglected and deprived of sensory stimulation in very early childhood that later intense nurturing failed to reverse serious cognitive and affective deficits (Nelson). Profound neglect is one form of traumatic stressor; violence is another. Research on early childhood confirms the statistical correlation between early exposure to violence, and enduring, often life long, violent subsequent behavior. (Kagitcibasi) Children subjected at home to physical child abuse are more likely to be abusers than those not so exposed; the same is true of children exposed to familial sexual abuse, or of street children who endure police brutality or the violence of gang members from an early age (Rizzini).

It is not only exposure to direct violence that is coupled with subsequent abusive conduct. Being a witness to violence, or experiencing violence indirectly can also have profoundly negative effects on subsequent behavior. Children raised in households with endemic intimate partner violence are more likely to be violent themselves in their subsequent conduct than those raised in homes where no such abuse existed. So too are children who are witness to community or societal violence, including in situations of armed conflict or criminal violence (Weingarten).

Early childhood development (ECD) is not the only context in which the propensity to violence or non violence has been studied. A significant body of research documents the association between incomplete maturational processes in adolescence and impulsive, including violent, conduct. Male sexual hormones contribute to these behaviors. We know, for example, that adolescents (usually defined as the second decade of life) particularly male adolescents, have a greater propensity than younger or older people, to impulsive including violent behavior to gratify desires and needs. This is in part because, despite intellectual and sexual maturation, their cortical pathways are still developing, a process that lasts longer than once thought, well into early adulthood (19 to 22 years). Neuroscientific psychology explains how synaptic connections, through a process of mylenation, mediate the way neurons communicate between different parts of the brain to affect the choice of behavior in a given context. The more primitive, affective parts of the adult brain, including the amygdala, drive desire, emotion and impulsive conduct, whereas the more advanced, cognitive parts of the brain, in the frontal cortex, are responsible for evaluating risk, calibrating different possible outcomes and consequences of action, and tempering immediate gratification and impulsive behavior. Where the process of mylenation is incomplete, as in the adolescent brain, communication between the two regions of the brain tends to be less efficient or effective; cognition is less likely to trump or to temper emotion (Steinberg).

Of course these are tendencies, susceptible to a range of individual variation. There is no one to one correlation between male adolescence and impulsive or violent behavior. Multiple factors impinge on these tendencies, including the impact of learnt behaviors, of individual maturation rates, of social and environmental factors driving arousal and self control, of individual personality differences. This is true both in the early childhood and adolescent contexts. In both situations, decoupling is possible in some circumstances.

In the ECD context, extensive social programming and related scholarly work have demonstrated that the known probability of coupling between exposure to early stress or violence and subsequent conduct can sometimes be reduced. Children raised in troubled situations with violence or harsh socio-economic stressors (teenage single parents, conflict settings, extreme poverty) but with appropriately nurturing parental conduct tend to enjoy life long cognitive and affective advantages compared to peers raised in similar situations but without the benefits of such protective or positive parenting (ACEV). Palestinian children in Gaza brought up by parents who manage to escape depression or despair fare better psychologically and educationally than their counterparts in homes where parents are unable to parent effectively (El Sarraj). In other words there are circumstances in which it has proved possible to decouple known stressors or other harmful triggers from subsequent conduct.

Research also suggests factors relevant to the development of strategies that may have an impact on decoupling masculinity from violence in adolescence. One particularly interesting and relevant factor is peer pressure. Recent research establishes the important and distinctive impact that peer pressure has on adolescents – more, for example, than it has on younger children or on adults (Steinberg). We now know that adolescents are particularly susceptible to peer pressure in selecting or modifying their behavior, whereas similar pressures exerted on adults in controlled experimental situations have demonstrably less impact.

How might these simple principles and insights apply to the challenge of decoupling triggers of male violence from the behavior of boys as they transition into adulthood? Both the ECD and the adolescent research have important implications for masculine violence. This violence is often enacted in situations where the early home or preceeding childhood experience has been violent (consider the case histories in the US Supreme Court adolescent death penalty or life imprisonment without parole cases and the extreme violence in the defendants’ home environments – Roper v Simmonds, Graham v Florida; the juvenile in the Delhi gang rape case of December 2012 had been living as a street child subjected to police violence in Delhi for at least 3 years prior to the crime). Male violence is also frequently associated with contexts where peer pressure is significant, including in situations of street violence, gang rape or armed conflict (consider the process of induction of child soldiers described by former Sierra Leone child soldier Ishmael Beah in his autobiography “A Long Way Gone”).

Conversely, situations of cultivated peer pressure that reward non violent, peaceful or peace enhancing conduct can make a decisive difference, despite incomplete physical maturation in the brain. A plethora of initiatives, many of them funded by philanthropic foundations as well as government programs, now rightly target this important variable, including Equal Community Foundation in Pune, India or Promundo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to mention just two among many. There are programs that include encouragement and social rewards for the humane treatment of animals, for non homophobic school relationships, for racially inclusive social groups and respect for girls and women on the basis of equality and non discrimination in the family, the school and community. Peer led trends are most effective in this regard, so that social rewards and reinforcement from the adolescent peer group itself have multiplier impacts (Weissbord).

If we take these insights from behavioral neuropsychology, early childhood development studies and gender justice social programming, and apply them to some of the most egregious situations of adolescent male violence, some important lessons about the challenge of decoupling masculinity from violence emerge. We can briefly consider three contexts, which, though different, are connected on a continuum – from situations of peace through situations of conflict. Consider first the “peacetime” situation in contemporary (non Naxal, Naga or Kashmir) India. The infamous Delhi rape (and murder) of December 16, 2012 finally shed a global spotlight on the endemic gender based violence, stigma and discrimination in the homeland of Gandhian non violence, as extensive as in other societies. Indian feminists like Sharda Jain in Jaipur, Shantha Sinha in Andhra Pradesh and Flavia Agnes in Mumbai, among many others, have long drawn attention to the pervasive gendered injustice and violence that permeates Indian society. It spans the whole gamut of life. It starts before birth (recall Amartya Sen’s famous “discovery” of the 1 million missing girls); it continues through infancy (nutritional and health care discrimination) and on into childhood (unequal access to schooling, play, sports and personal freedom; discriminatory engagement in housework including child care). As the parent of teenage girl in Gujerat who we interviewed for a study on school access put it: “ Boys cannot work like girls, for example if our daughter is out of the village for some reason then we call our neighbour’s daughter for household work.” (Kelly and Bhabha, BJSE, 743)

Gender violence and discrimination are endemic in adolescence (withdrawal from public sphere, forced girl child marriage, exposure to sexual violence and harassment in the public and private sphere) and persist right through to adulthood (domestic violence, including dowry deaths and correlative lack of effective and accessible legal representation, social support, shelter or dignified integration).

Apart from manifest discrimination, other aspects of Indian social organization and mainstream culture contribute to gender inequality and violence. A substantial body of work highlights the absence of effective co-education within the school system (even mixed schools segregate children – by gender and often caste – within the classroom) (Muktangan), the lack of sex or adolescent education (and hence the continuing shame and secrecy around crucial adolescent issues such as masturbation, menstruation, sexuality, sexual desire) (NCERT) and the strict social censure applied to informal mixed gender relationships in adolescence (Kelly and Bhabha). The combination of pervasive boy preference and patriarchal priorities in Indian public culture as a whole, and prudish reticence over adolescent sexuality, contribute to a toxic gender climate (Agnes). This is the context that perpetuates tolerance of extreme sexual harassment in the public sphere, including in school, college and public transportation (UGC Report). Our research highlights the pervasive impact of gender based harassment on low caste girls, particularly as time spent traveling to and from school increased (Kelly, Bhabha, Krishna). In this context, decoupling masculinity from violence requires a root and branch investment throughout Indian society. This investment would entail reversing the current acquiescence so that rape and male gang violence become explicitly and repeatedly abhorred in the press and on TV, in Bollywood, in the Raja and Lokh Sabha, in the temple, mosque and gurdwara rather than secretly admired (or justified because “boys will be boys”). It would include seriously addressing boy birth preference, including understanding why this has not been stopped by the criminalization of sex selective abortion, important though that is. The agenda is, inevitably, ambitious and broad, ranging extensively across the Indian social, political and economic sphere, to mainstream gender justice. It entails a vigorous and generous investment in ensuring that daughters, girls and women, are equal players in education, work and elderly parent care, so that young women are not punished but celebrated for giving birth to girls. Concurrently, sexual harassment in school will only decline once boys and girls from a very early age are brought in close, non-predatory contact with each other, with zero tolerance of teasing, bullying or violence and endorsement of gender respectful male conduct that elicits praise not ridicule from the earliest pre school encounters onwards. Sexual violence in marriage, on the streets, in the work place and in educational settings will only decline with real access to gender equal social, legal protection and income generating opportunity, and a much more energetic public sphere engagement with the issue than has been the case so far. Investing in toilets and other aspects of water and sanitation is hardly an adequate gender justice program for contemporary India. Neither is simplying decrying the barbarity of individual rapist “goons” or baying for their punishment by use of the death penalty. A much more comprehensive, socially and fiscally costly and long term political process is necessary.

The second situation we can, more briefly, consider to explore what decoupling of adolescent masculinity and violence might entail, is that of endemic gang related violence, including sexual violence, in Central America, Honduras and El Salvador in particular. This is a context somewhere between “peace” and conflict, where humanitarian laws of war do not apply, where asylum from persecution is unavailable, where hot conflict as such is not acknowledged, but where risks to life and liberty, particularly for poor, urban male adolescents, are extreme (Fonseca). In these countries, with the horrific status as murder capitals of the world, young boys grow up exposed to daily and extreme violence as a survival strategy. Exit from violence is as perilous as engagement with it – as neutrality in the face of competing gang recruitment demonstrates and the often disastrous sequelae to distress migration confirm (WRC). Testimony from child migrant survivors of gang violence seeking asylum in the US confirm the picture of brutalized masculinity, established from a very early age as 4 year old children are forced to be look outs for drug war lords and 11 and 12 year old adolescents are forced to take part in violent shoot outs, drug smuggling and extortion (Terrio).

Unlike the Indian context, in this central American sphere, the decoupling of male adolescence from violence does not seem conceivable within a purely national frame. Instead a regional policy is essential, one that aggressively promotes access to economic opportunity, viable and just state services and independent judicial institutions. It is impossible to conceive of the decoupling of adolescent masculinity from violence, while US drug and migration policy remain intact (Aguayo). Other critical factors relevant to male violence include economic disempowerment resulting from unequal and exploitative trade agreements generated through NAFTA, and the US Department of Homeland Security’s use of Mexico as an abusive buffer zone preventing legitimate humanitarian flight by populations from countries to its south trapped in life threatening violence (HRW). Finally, and closely related, the rapid and progressive decline of central American governance into endemically corrupt and failed states, makes the prospects of regenerating law abiding and gender just societies any time soon, remote. To prevent the brutalization of significant portions of the domestic population including of male adolescents from a very early age, gender respectful social norms that proscribe macho sexual predation are essential, but they are unlikely to be sufficient. Decoupling violence for Central American male adolescence requires alternative, viable and accessible avenues for survival, real social and economic investment coupled with a vigorous and non-corrupt justice system that render violence counterproductive or futile – a far cry from the present reality (Casas-Zamora).

Finally, one can briefly consider what the decoupling of male adolescence from violence would consist of in acknowledged conflict settings, such as Syria, Iraq, Libya and Eritrea today. A combination of robust strategies would include the root and branch interventions starting within the family, school and community already discussed in the Indian context, together with the reinterpretation of Islamic religious doctrine to encompass gender equal norms promoted by Muslim feminist and gender justice civil society actors already engaged in the region (Abu-Lughod, El Kefi). These strategies would address some of the challenge of mitigating the gender violence of the refugee camps and migration routes but also the adoption of increasingly patriarchal norms in the face of national implosion and long term insecurity. But, as discussed in the Central American context, no substantial progress is likely without international, transnational and global economic, political and trade policies that strengthen opposition to dictatorship and violence, and that promote social justice, including gender justice. Increasing Islamophobia in Europe and North America will strengthen the conservative appeal of groups like ISIS and their promotion of a retrograde Islam that traps girls and women in a medieval Caliphate opposed to racist Christian hegemonic forces, even if the immediate tragedy of civil war in Syria abates.

To conclude, decoupling is neither a simple not a linear process. Just as multiple factors, spanning the entire ecology of human existence from individual biology through family, community, society, state and global institutions, impinge on the coupling of our construction of self and gendered identity with some degree of propensity towards violence, so a similarly extensive canvas of factors are relevant to the hard and urgent task of decoupling masculinity from violence.

Mainly it is the militaries, intelligence agencies, media and political scientists that guide our understanding of global terrorism and militant Islamism. Sustainability focused academic disciplines allow deeper analysis and can provide holistic answers to difficult questions such as what are the causes of escalating violence among (Muslim) men and to what extent can de-radicalization and other interventions really be treated as solutions etc. It is very important to let development studies and anthropology influence our understanding of militancy and terrorism. Gender theory that has not quite informed or formed our strategies and/or perspectives on issues of militancy, terrorism and counterterrorism, can in reality play a much greater role in proposing practical and effective solutions.

Through empirical research I mainly investigate Muslim contexts; the lived experiences of Muslim men and the factors that drive/or may drive them towards political violence. I have found that a strong connection exists between gender constructions (identities, roles, expectations etc.) and militant Islamism, and terrorism. Therefore any discussion on prevalence of violence among Muslim men cannot be complete if factors that shape masculinities are not considered. Here I discuss three such factors that shape Muslim masculinities. First is culture that primarily includes ethnic, kinship, clan, community values and ways of living. Religion i.e. Islam has a primordial and meaningful interaction with local culture and so does media. The second significant factor is history and third is the global and local politico-economic context within which Muslim masculinities form. These factors either offer a certain ‘gender-appeal,’ or a ‘gender license/leeway,’ and at times cause gender-based grievances. For example, cultural codes of honour; Quranic concepts of shahadat i.e. martyrdom and ar–rijalu qawwamuna al’un nisa’ i.e. men are the protectors and maintainers [qawwamun] of women; along with media representations of a hero who is involved in some ‘mission impossible’; and the historical evidence on Muslim warriors who rebelled against oppression of the colonial masters; all have a certain element of gender-appeal (and anxiety) for young Muslim men.

Simultaneously gender programming in certain cultures is done in a way that tools of violence i.e. weapons along with blood hunt and revenge are considered part of masculine identity. Muslim cultures are often silent when men commit violence and generation upon generation of women have been programmed to tolerate bad behavior and violence from men so that based on gender inequality household equilibrium can be maintained. Add on this the leeway that men can have in their public interactions. Outside their homes they may interact with drug peddlers, traffickers (or even bomb suppliers or terrorists networks) without their families ever discovering or intruding. In Muslim spaces the norm is to keep women under surveillance, not men.

Regarding gender based grievances, a prominent example to understand this can be the counterterrorism tactics adopted at Abu Ghraib prison. Leaked photos confirm that emasculation was used as a means and tool to abuse, ridicule and humiliate Arab men – causing direct offence to the wider Muslim population; Arab, non-Arab, men and women alike. In parenthesis, it is equally relevant to problematize our symbolic interactionism with masculinity and femininity. If violence against Abu Ghraib prisoners is deleted from the equation – then essentially we are left to conclude: masculinity is noble whereas femininity is humiliating and that the latter can be used as a weapon to strip men of a state much higher and precious i.e. masculinity. This however is not the focus here. The very fact that emasculation can be used to victimize men (particularly within a politically violent context), confirms our original understanding of ‘gender’ being cross cutting. Therefore gender studies should and must always remain a valid concern and interest for policy makers in the realm of counterterrorism, and counter militancy/insurgency operations.

Also it is important to note the dissonance existing between the contemporary living conditions of Muslim men and the masculine attributes that they are programmed to idealize. Mostly leading dangerous and/or politically and economically deprived lives many Muslim men have difficulty upholding religious, socio-cultural ideals associated with their gender. At some level all this creates a crisis in their gender identity and performance. In cases, militant Islamism becomes a means to authenticate and enact one’s culturally prescribed and idealized gender roles. Men have used and continue to use Islamism and particularly militant Islamism as means of self-actualization and directly in service of matters associated with personhood and masculinity. Terrorist networks harness the political agency of these masculinities in crisis. In many cases families fail to discover what their boys are doing.

One must recognize that marginalized contexts cause emergence of protest culture and practices and these are often manifested in form of violence. Mostly protest cultures have in them reactionary forces who have revenge on their mind. In Muslim spaces, I mainly see two forms of masculinities: aggressive and emasculated. Mostly demanding an end to occupation, socio-economic inequalities, injustices, bad governance these agitated young men express themselves through protests. Islamist and terrorist groups operating around these protestors know how to engage their aggression and remove their grievances. The question is, do we?

We cannot spread correction fluid over violent men and pretend that everything is fine. Neither can we eliminate violent men treating them as some zombie paper shooting targets (an approach we know governments and militaries are capable of adopting). It is only through planning policy, academic and community level interventions that we can hope to make progress in transforming violent masculinities. In this regard some thoughts and concerns are shared below:

Policy Level

Making governments ‘respond’ rather than ‘react’ against violence. In real world we have to see whether governments are interested in transforming violent individuals or in punishing them. Soon after the Army Public School attack in Peshawar in December 2014, Pakistan lifted the moratorium on executions and within the next nine month hanged 239 men. Governments consist of civil and military bureaucracies, legislative and judicial bodies but governments also administer public universities. The question is who will continue advising the presidents and prime ministers in matters of political violence and acts of terrorism? Even if universities with their theorists and empirical researchers play a role – who will have the final word? In case of Pakistan, almost always we find it to be the military generals and/or external sources (ordinarily ‘understood’ as US Administration). Notwithstanding, military cannot be held responsible in isolation. Long term governance failures and administrative inefficiency pave way for aggressive military action as a quick and final fix. This can only be avoided if the civilian machinery works efficiently and effectively around the clock.

Realizing that de-radicalization has its limitations. It is important to de-radicalize violent men and to an extent this can be achieved through psychotherapies, job provision and social re-integration. Simultaneously it is important for governments to recognize that if not addressed, extremism in the wider society will remain and grow (for example, the systemic gender inequalities and the resulting violence). Considering that social re-integration of the de-radicalized individual is of particular interest, the overall state of society to which this de-radicalized individual returns has to be questioned. To what extent can it be safely assumed that he will not be re-radicalized? Policy interventions must aim to eliminate extremism from society as a whole. Transformation in violent masculinities will not occur through symptomatic treatments but by boosting the immune system and preventing growth of disease i.e. violence. Governments must transform marginalized contexts that produce violent masculinities.

Despite the complexity involved, it is important for the ongoing and future de-radicalization interventions to address problems arising out of culturally scripted gender roles.

Early childhood development and training. Boys Scouts or something similar, can help prevent emergence and growth of violent masculinities. Let there be no boys – but only boy scouts. I am including here an excerpt from Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s speech to Pakistan Boy Scouts administration: “If we are to build a safer, cleaner and happier world, let us start with the individual — catch him young and inculcate in him the scout’s motto of service before self, and purity in thought, word and deed. If our young people learn to befriend all, to help other people at all times, subordinate personal interest to the welfare of others, eschew violence of thought, word and action, I am sanguine that the attainment of universal brotherhood is possible and within your reach.” Point being, the vision has always been there but Pakistani governments could not strategize and implement this vision. Not only this, many in Pakistan remain out of school and are engaged in child labour. The presence of landed aristocracy in the country i.e. the feudal classes worsens the situation. It may be possible to catch a boy in school (and transform him into a peaceful and law abiding scout) but it is a real challenge to make Jinnah’s vision a reality for out of school children.

Human Security as a solution. I also find human security a promising concept. In 1994 Dr. Mahbub-ul Haq from Pakistan compiled a report for UNDP favoring human security. Often seen in opposition to state security, human security emphasizes on food, education, environment, health – but also personal security, community security and political security of individuals. It is deliberately protective and this is what makes it valuable. There is a recognition that people and communities are threatened by occurrences and forces on which they lack control. Human security approach urges institutions to offer protection that is institutionalized (not episodic), responsive (not rigid) and preventative (not reactive) [Sen 2000]. Human security creates room to transform violent masculinities.

Militarism oriented counterterrorism and its impact. The upheaval in masculinities is exacerbated by militarism oriented counterterrorism. Gradually countries like Pakistan have to move away from this as military operations prove counterproductive – even if not immediately, certainly in the longer run. Military solutions are state security oriented and compromise human security.

Academic Level

Feminism and masculinity studies in Muslim spaces. Gender theorists engaging with Muslim societies need to contribute towards existing literature on Muslim masculinity. Gender and the agenda for women’s rights is considered a Western import – and feminists are generically perceived as secular and agents of the West. This has led many Muslim feminists to become overly protective of their women’s rights agenda simultaneously causing an intellectual block or resistance against concepts and standpoints that emerge from masculinity studies. Discussions on masculinities in Muslim academic and activist spaces is also difficult due to the magnitude of violence against women that exists in these societies. Gender almost always, regardless of global intellectual shifts from Women in Development (WID) to Women and Development (WAD) to Gender and Development (GAD) for all practical purposes remains, ‘women’s rights’. Masculinity studies is often and summarily engaged with only to the extent of serving and promoting purely women’s rights agenda. For example, feminists may have started to recognize the value of engaging men to end violence against women but they continue to resist recognizing that performance of gender roles can be as much a pressure on men as on women and that despite having some leeway (otherwise denied to women) men too lead pre-determined lives and have their own gender-based issues as well.

Journalism’s treatment of the subject. Gradually, the logic of the nexus between Muslim masculinities and militant Islamism has made it into journalist spaces. Sentences such as hyper masculinity is causing jihad etc. are now appearing in international newspapers, quite often without in-depth analysis. Qualified academics and researchers need to contribute towards improving this rather cosmetic and consumer oriented understanding of the issue.

Community level

Exposing youth to a fuller description of their culture and belief. Psychologists often use tools based on the principle of optical illusion. In this a picture may have two or three dimensions though a single is visible in the first instance. On looking closely one can gradually spot additional dimensions. The need is to produce new or use existing literature that helps men view the picture in an integrated manner. This knowledge can be disseminated through local/traditional means (for example, through ‘story telling’ sessions in market places, café’s etc.)

Involving young men. Informal social gatherings at the local level (for example, baithak in Punjab, Pakistan) can serve as avenues where work for peace may be planned. Some basic level civil society interventions can help youth organize and start their work for peace. Externally funded activism can be counterproductive at the local level, though not always. Ordinary people must own counter-radicalization processes and the efforts should emerge and be supported from ‘within’.

Conclusion

Whether masculinity is taken as a practice, a performance, or a normative construct – it remains transformable and is negotiable. Masculinities are a product of contexts. Change the context – masculinities will change too. It needs mentioning, however, that expected changes are not sudden but gradual. With a clear vision, a set of workable strategies and measurable indicators – violent masculinities can be gauged, intervened, monitored, and transformed in the longer run.

Prepared for the February 18 – 19, 2016 seminar, Transforming Violent Masculinities, organized by the winners of the 2015-2016 WPF Student Seminar Competition.

Rio de Janeiro, along with other Latin American cities, are in the top of global rankings of cities facing high rates of chronic urban violence, of which men are the main perpetrators as the vast majority of homicide victims. Dominant, hyper-masculine or masculinist norms that uphold violence represent a shared characteristic of state-sanctioned and criminal groups in Brazil – including drug trafficking gangs,[i] militia (mostly comprised of off-duty police) and police forces. Understanding that these hyper-masculine norms are constructed during the socialization of boys, and continue to be reinforced as men are exposed to groups that use armed violence can offer insightful strategies to reducing urban violence. This article presents findings from two studies carried out Promundo starting in 1999. Promundo is a Brazilian-based NGO, which now works in more than 20 countries, that carries out applied research, program development and advocacy related to gender equality and violence prevention.

Some Background on Rio de Janeiro, and Violent Masculinities

Between 1980 and 2010, more than one million people were murdered in Brazil. The vast majority of the victims were young, low income black men. As a result of these persistently high male homicide rates, there are currently 4 million more women than men in Brazil. This high rate of homicide continues despite the fact that life has improved in many ways for the poorest segment of the population. Brazil has seen an impressive reduction of social inequality and an improvement of social indicators in the last fifteen years. The low income population in Brazil has more money in their pockets and their children have more access to education and health. But these important achievements have had little effect on reducing homicide.

There are 56.4 homicides for every 100,000 people in Brazil (according to 2010 data). This translates into about 43,000 deaths by homicide a year and the seventh highest homicide rate in the world. While homicide rates have been declining in Brazil, the gap between the homicide rates for black men and white men has increased. Many of the young men who are murdered or murder in Brazil are connected to drug trafficking gangs; others are members of the police. Most of these homicides occur in urban areas, where the drug trade emerged as a response to limited employment and limited presence of the state, and where there is easy access to firearms. It is also related to patterns of conflict resolution based on competition for reputation, for recognition and honor, for prestige among female partners and from near daily exposure to violence by police, by armed militias, by gangs and in the media. Armed violence, and carrying of weapons has become in some ways normal, and a way to feel like men for young men who otherwise feel excluded from Brazil’s economic boom times.

Gangs compete with and clash with violent police and armed militias – and all of them use weapons and force to live up to notions of hyper-masculinity. And they thrive in an environment in which the state has shown a chronic inability to acknowledge the problem for what it is, much less deal with it. In Rio de Janeiro, for instance, in an attempt to reduce gang violence, the government implemented the so-called Pacifying Police Units (UPP) in 2008, a program that permanent located military police units in low income areas (favelas) that have historically been dominated by drug-dealing gangs and community militias (mostly made up of former police or off-duty police) who fight against them. From 2010-2015, 36 UPPs have been inaugurated in Rio. While they have made significant progress in reducing the reach and power of drug gangs, they are also abusive of community residents, and frequently violent.

Brazil’s military police (the state police that still operate within a military logic of enemies and insurgents rather than a logic of public safety) is one of the most violent and lethal police forces worldwide. In 2007 police killed 1,330 people in the state of Rio de Janeiro alone. As a comparison, in that same year, police forces in all of the United States (hardly a model of restraint in the use of lethal force against young men of color) committed 391 “justifiable killings.”

As another indication of the face of masculinity in favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Promundo recently conducted a study in several favelas in Rio de Janeiro asked children ages 4-11 about their perceptions of security and safety in their communities. Across age groups, the children reported that they were scared of men in their communities; they ranked the police as the most frightening of men, followed by men involved in gangs, and lastly by men in general.

Promundo’s Research on Pathways to Non-Violent Masculinity

In this context, in 1999-2000, we carried out the first of two studies on young men and non-violent pathways to manhood. This first study (published as Dying to be Men: Youth, Marginalization and Masculinity, Routledge, 2005) involved a comparison group of African-American young men in Chicago. In total, the study included more than 30 young men followed over the course of more than a year and interviewed in at least two moments; a significant family member or friend of each of the young men were also interviewed. The young men were chosen because they had numerous risk factors associated with being in gangs, had family members or peers in gangs. Qualitative analysis focused on identifying coping strategies or factors that seemed to contribute to their staying out of gang-related violence and activity.

The young men not involved in gangs who were interviewed by the author in Chicago and Rio de Janeiro showed a variety of similar characteristics that seemed to explain how they stayed out of gangs and comandos, including: (a) having a valued, stable relationship with a parent, a grandparent, or a female partner (or multiple relationships) who would be disappointed if the young man became involved with gangs; (b) having access to alternative identities or some other sense of self that was positively valued by the young man and by those in his social setting, particularly the male peer group (for example, being a good student, athlete, or musician or having a good job);(c) being able to reflect on the risks and costs associated with the violent version of masculinity promoted by gang members; and (d) finding an alternative male peer group that provided positive reinforcement for non-gang male identities (Barker 1998b, 2000b, 2001).

Other researchers working in Brazil have identified similar factors. One study comparing young men in Rio de Janeiro who were juvenile offenders with their non-offending siblings identified a number of protective factors that worked in favor of the nondelinquent young men (Assis 1999). The non-offending siblings: (a) showed more optimism toward their life settings; (b) were more verbally expressive; (c) were either the first-born or youngest siblings in the family; (d) had calmer temperaments; and (e) reported stronger affective connections with parents and/or teachers.

For young men in Chicago and Rio de Janeiro who had been involved in a comando or gangs and gotten out, a number of factors seem to have made it possible for them to leave. These included fear, becoming a father and assuming a relationship with the child and child’s mother, moving out of the neighborhood or community, or becoming a member of an evangelical church (Barker 1998b, 2001). Other research in the United States uncovers similar patterns. When young men in low-income and violent settings find conventional means to attain identity and status—finishing school; acquiring legal, stable, and reasonably well-paid employ- ment; having family members they can connect to; having non-delinquent peers; forming their own family—most young men stay out of gangs and other delinquent behaviors.

Our second study was carried out in 2014-2015 with support from the International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) Safe and Inclusive Cities Programme.

The research included key informant interviews with experts in urban violence, public security, gender and violence, and programs designed for leaving trafficking or ending IPV. In-depth life history interviews were conducted with a focus on trajectories toward abandoning or lessening the use of violence, or involvement in an armed group. Recognizing these as complex phenomena, several groups were created for the fieldwork sample as described in the table below.[ii]

These in-depth life history interviews sought to understand experiences during childhood and adolescence and other forms of socialization, as well as how gender norms influence constructions of violent or non-violent masculinities. There was a focus on which factors enable men – surrounded by high exposure to violence and forms of inequality – to abandon or lessen their use of violence, or adopt non-violent attitudes and behaviors in complex urban settings.

In terms of trajectories into gang-related violence, young men most often entered traffic for financial reasons, and in many cases, described the proximity of traffic ‘in front of their doorstep.’ Joining gangs usually entailed an invitation by someone involved, who began fostering a relationship with the man or woman, and small jobs (i.e., running drugs). In contrast to gangs in Central America and other parts of the world, men enter and leave drug trafficking multiple times in Rio de Janeiro. Leaving is attainable, and easier the lower the position. Younger men who participated in trafficking and those who remained as runners and sellers (rather than as chefes or in a higher rank), all spoke of entering and leaving an average of three or four times. The processes of transformation to non-violence, is thus far from linear.

The velha guarda former traffickers (those who were older, and tended to have spent more years in traffic and prison) discussed how the nature of traffic has shifted over the years; namely, that there is less solidarity, or internal protection of one another and more violence (internally, with other gangs and with the police and militias). During fieldwork, a photographer described hearing residents complain about the aftermath of many drug lords’ imprisonment in Maré (a community from which several former traffickers were interviewed, which experienced a major army occupation prior of the time of the fieldwork). Whereas the chefes tended to maintain order as to avoid drawing attention, the younger men remaining are described as being more violent and reckless and therefore disrupt order set by the velha guarda. The arrival of the UPPs (or previously, the army to ‘prepare the terrain’ in the case of Maré) has had differing effects in each community in which it was implemented. Typically, traffic continues but to a weaker and less visible degree.

The entering and leaving phenomenon itself generated a constant flux between protection and vulnerability. When leaving, young men had to pay any ‘outstanding debts’ (to the chefe), “in order to avoid being vulnerable” as one former trafficker described it. For all, getting a job was more difficult with each re-entry into the formal job market especially after long absences or with a criminal record (in which other skills or education were absent). As a testament to the challenge of leaving, the NGO program from which we interviewed several former traffickers, mentioned that a few already returned, even if to a lesser degree, from the beginning to middle of field research.

The temptations or pull factors to return to traffic are many, and they are very real given settings of insecurity and inequality: traffickers themselves did not talk much of wanting to return, but several wives mentioned their husbands still considered it. One NGO with a reintegration program from which we interviewed several men had already lost a few men back to traffic in the months following interviews. The money is far greater than any minimum wage job could offer, and the power-related benefits and status are not easy to substitute. As for activists, they make little money and their work can put them at risk. For the police, leaving the job altogether, or creating more peaceful change toward non-violent forms of mediation are met with resistance within police forces.

As in the case of the first the analysis of the transcripts focused on identifying factors that seemed to explain resistance to violence. These included, in the case of men who became activists, mobility (out of favelas) and exposure to alternative non-violent masculinities. For many men in all the categories we could frequently see replacing intergenerational transfers of violence with caregiving. Others showed active anger reduction strategies and could identify those strategies, which including ways of avoiding bringing violence from the street into the home. Women and men police discussed ways they ‘cooled down’ after an especially stressful day.

For nearly all the men we could see signs of redefining manhood along non-violent line. The research showed that a trajectory out of violence can also offer the possibility to adjust other gender norms toward greater equity, as seen in the examples with men becoming fathers and/or starting to participate more in caregiving and household tasks upon leaving trafficking. In addition to taking on greater caregiving roles following after leaving traffic, men also described wanting to leave to alleviate the worry of a family member and thus ameliorate the relationship with a family member who they had placed at a distance or treated poorly during involvement in traffic. The tendency especially for younger and less experienced drug traffickers to enter and leave factions multiple times, offers policy implications with regard to capitalizing moments in which traffickers leave.

Program Implications

Globally, a handful of programs and research have begun to address resistance and non-violent pathways of men. Work involving men in complementing women, peace and security agendas has made headway in recent years (Vess et al., 2013). An example of this work is the Living Peace groups, created by Promundo in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The purpose of these groups is to encourage men to overcome psychosocial trauma and to support men’s abilities to sustain peace violence in conflict-affected settings through educational groups and campaigns. Research on positive deviance by Promundo has also explored ways in which young men can and have questioned and countered harmful prevailing norms that can contribute to violent behavior. While delinquency and gun ownership may provide a sense of power, there are also numerous other factors that serve to counter men’s participation in gang or other delinquent activity (Barker, 1998, 2005; Barker and Ricardo, 2006).

The underlying assumption around public security policy in Rio de Janeiro is that increasing the police force will reduce urban violence. As such, the majority of financial and political resources are dedicated to the police, with more intermittent programming otherwise, including with prevention. Challenges continue to persist in transforming the police force (i.e., slowness in moving away from militarized tactics that favor the excessive use of force, and in ending practices of corruption, torture and lack of routine investigations). Without a doubt, efforts to reform the city’s police force are still needed. Incentives need to be given to men and women police, like many of the ones interviewed, to value and integrate, in a serious way, methods of conflict resolution and non-violence, and appropriate uses of force in order to counter the persisting militarized, masculinist war ethos.

A public security model has much to gain by considering the vulnerabilities, social conditions, and existing non-violent trajectories that could be leveraged. Developing more inclusive and comprehensive security models calls for addressing the under-acknowledged, and yet preventable hyper-masculine norms that uphold violence. Clearly, these vulnerabilities are also exacerbated when favelas remain isolated from better security models as well as better education, health and employment opportunities. Critically, former traffickers, police, and their spouses and family members who live in scenarios of urban violence develop remarkable strategies to overcome vulnerabilities and to develop non-violent trajectories. The strategies described here should be considered in the design of programs and policies. The trajectories of these women and men provide a wealth of knowledge for promoting non-violence.

Barker, G. and Ricardo, C. (2006). “Young Men and the Construction of Masculinity in Sub-Saharan Africa: Implications for HIV/AIDS, Conflict and Violence,” in The Other Half of Gender: Men’s Issues in Development, Washington, DC: The World Bank, 159-193.

Flood, M. (2013). Engaging Men from Diverse Backgrounds in Preventing Men’s Violence Against Women. Stand Up! National Conference on Eliminating All Forms of Violence Against CaLD Women, April 29-30, Canberra.

Kato-Wallace, J., Barker, G., Eads, M., & Levtov, R. (2014). Global pathways to men’s caregiving: Mixed methods findings from the International Men and Gender Equality Survey and the Men Who Care study. Global Public Health: An International Journal for Research, Policy and Practice.

Moura, T.; Santos, R.; Soares, B. (2010). “Auto de Resistência : the collective action of women relatives of victims of police violence in Rio de Janeiro”, Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, 1.2, Fall/Winter.

Muggah, R. (2012). Researching the Urban Dilemma: Urbanization, Poverty and Violence. International Development Research Center (IDRC), May 2012.

[i] The drug trade in Rio de Janeiro is dominated by three major factions: Comando Vermelho (CV), Terceiro Comando (TC), and Amigos dos Amigos (AA) that trade primarily marijuana, cocaine and crack (this varies by the territory).

[ii] This qualitative research is also complemented by a quantitative household survey that will examine how exposure to violence influences men’s and women’s attitudes, experiences and self-reported behaviors with regard to masculinities, violence, and gender equality measures.

[iii] Communities and neighborhoods represented in the greater metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro include Alemão Complex, Andarai, Caju, Catumbi, Cerro Cora, Formiga, Madureira, Maré Complex (from different factions/ favelas within), Mesquita, Nova América, Rocinha, Santa Marta, and Vidigal. They include a mixture of sizes, UPP and non-UPP communities, and geographic locations and distance from the center of the city.

[iv] We also interviewed one former member of a militia group. Because of security concerns and the difficulty identifying ‘former’ militia, we did not conduct further interviews.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/04/06/voices-of-resistance-non-violent-trajectories-of-young-and-adult-men-in-rio-de-janeiro-brazil/feed/0Interview with Alex de Waal in Addis Fortunehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/03/28/interview-with-alex-de-waal-in-addis-fortune/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/03/28/interview-with-alex-de-waal-in-addis-fortune/#commentsMon, 28 Mar 2016 11:56:52 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3271Addis Fortune published an interview with Alex de Waal on March 21, 2016, “Do or Die of Political Liberalization.” Full transcript is below:

Alex de Waal (PhD) is new neither to book writing nor to the subjects he is interested in writing about. A product of a literary family – his mother was a writer on religion – he has written or edited 15 books, including his latest, titled, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War, and the Business of Power.

At 53, he is considered a foremost authority on Sudan and other countries in the Horn of Africa. Darfur is prominent in this. He recalls how the head of a Sudanese delegation was engaged in “buying of the Darfur rebels on a one by one basis,” with mixed results. In fact, his recent book was prompted partly due to his academic interest and engagement in the region for almost 30 years, and his association with the leading figures shaping political life in these countries. Most outstanding among these individuals was the late Meles Zenawi, with whom de Waal had much discussion and debate.

One sharp difference was over Meles’ decision to go to Mogadishu, in 2006, to disarm what was then the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). De Waal believed a route for Somalia’s stability was through the emerging business class. Admittedly Islamic, the private sector in Somalia is “very practical and opportunistic”, far from being ideological, argued de Waal. He likened UIC to a Chamber of Commerce, despite its radical wing. De Waal recalled that Meles was not worried over the radicals in Somalia he thought were defeated in the mid 1990s as he was consumed with the Eritrean involvement.

“The Eritrean factor overrode what was better political judgment,” de Waal remembers. “It led to a political blunder.”

Over the years though, the two met regularly discuss Meles’ theory of democratic developmental state. Meles had tried to explain how to escape from the poverty trap into accelerating economic growth and how to overcome this traditional mode of governance.

“I used to tell him what he was up against is something much more dynamic and potentially dangerous than just old-style and feudal rent-seeking politics,” said de Waal. “The political market was actually a highly modernized form of political transactions, which could undo state-building.”

De Waal observed how the institutions were getting dismantled in Sudan, and very dramatically in Kenya, associated with the contestation over the 2007 elections.

“Don’t be so confident that this process can’t happen here,” de Waal recalled sharing his warning to Meles in this exclusive interview with our Managing Editor, Tamrat G. Giorgis. “In his last few months, it was interesting to see how Meles was beginning to accommodate some of the critique of the democratic side.”

Fortune: For the last 150 years, this region – Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea – has been a battleground for strategic values, first by the British, who wanted to control the Red Sea; then by the Egyptians, who sought to control the source of the Nile; and now by the Americans, because they have an interest in fighting international terrorism. Do you see this changing any time soon – in your lifetime?

De Waal: The fundamentals do not change. Ever since the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the Red Sea became the main artery of British imperialism – the route between India and Great Britain. Egypt became important and therefore the Nile. The Horn of Africa was always defined by outsiders, not by its own people. And then in the 1970s, you had the Arab-Israeli conflict over the Red Sea, and you had also the Cold War coming into this area precisely for the same reason.

After the end of the Cold War, we had a 25-year period when it was not strategically important. That changed. And it changed in stages – with the counter-revolution in Egypt, el Sisi coming to power, and his link with Saudi Arabia, and the Americans withdrawing. Although the Saudis want to take control of their entire security perimeter, which includes the Red Sea, it really only became active with the war in Yemen.

What the war in Yemen, suddenly you had not only a competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which on the African side of the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia won hands down. The Sudanese, the Djiboutians, the Somalis got rid of the Iranians and the Eritreans came in with the Saudis and the Emiratis. But also there is competition between the Saudis and Emiratis on one side; and the Qataris and the Turks on the other, which is important in Somalia.

What it means is that the Egyptians are back not just as Egypt but in coalition with the Saudis, which means there is a lot more money involved. Suddenly, Ethiopia finds that the strategic coastline, the Port of Assab, which has been taken over by the United Arab Emirates as an airbase, is an enormously valuable piece of real estate, and there is no grand strategy. Ethiopia is faced with an activist Egypt, an activist Saudi Arabia – it does not have an activist policy of its own, other than asserting the status quo, which is not going to work.

The irony here is that actually the interests of Egypt and Ethiopia on almost everything are aligned. They have the same interests. There is just the historic distrust between the two. Neither has been able to overcome that distrust. But the way this will play out, first of all in Somalia with the elections – because both the Saudis and the Emiratis on one side, and the Turks and the Qataris on the other, are pouring money into these elections competitively. What we will see coming out of the elections in Somalia is candidates that follow one or other form of Islamism. Now this may undermine al Shabaab’s constituency, not necessarily to the advantage of Ethiopia. But I do not see an Ethiopian strategy for either welcoming this or working with it. Ethiopia needs to get back to the drawing board and rethink the security and foreign affairs strategy of its neighbourhood. Otherwise it is going to get caught out.

Q:All these countries have been challenged by political illegitimacy, lack of social cohesion and economic sustainability. Why do you think these elements have eluded them all these years?

I think it is not unique to this part of Africa. This is really a common problem throughout Africa and the Middle East.

Q: But more so in the Horn of Africa.

Not necessarily. It is particularly acute here because of the divisions between countries and the extent of international rivalries, and the proximity to the Middle East and the strategic rivalries that exist. I would say that it has taken on a very new form, in that there was a time, a generation ago, in the 60s and 70s when there was a modernist state-building project. The people really believed it. After the crisis in the 1980s, they did not come back in the form they had before. Again, Ethiopia is an exception because under EPRDF, it embarked on a rather traditional developmentalist project.

Q: But it is faced with the same challenges.

The fundamental political economic issue that faces all these countries is that you can only achieve development, without which you cannot develop other things like democracy. Not in this region. You will be eaten up if you are poor and frustrated. Look at what happened to Somalia and to South Sudan. Because of the turbulence in the global system you can be wiped out pretty much overnight – and we have seen this happen to a number of different countries. It is part of the reason why South Africa is in such trouble at the moment. Its manufacturing was massively textile – global factors over which they had no control – and this is fundamentally where Meles Zenawi got it right. He said you cannot expect this country to develop in an accelerated way sufficient to feed its people and to achieve a decent living if you just go down the conventional neoliberal route. It needs an activist state that directs rents and investments into productive sectors.

The economic record of the last 15 years – although there are many things you can quibble about – is exceptional and certainly you can compare it with just about anywhere else that does not have oil. It is impressive! It is a vindication of the fact that you do need a state that can pursue a well-articulated developmental project which can generate the kind of economic growth from which you can get legitimacy.

The problem is that it has not moved effectively in terms of democratization, which is very problematic. There is a crisis now; everybody knows it. But the crisis now is primarily a political and political economic crisis. It can only be solved politically by political economic measures, such as consultation with the people, addressing their legitimate grievances, allowing political associations to be formed that can represent peoples’ interest. If it is addressed in a security way, it will be a disaster.

One of the things Meles always said was, “do not address a political problem with a security solution.” And I said to him, “is that not what you are doing in Somalia?” And he said, “Yes it is and we’re going to pay a price but it’s a price we have to pay.”

Q: Your book, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa, talks about the monetization of politics in the region and how allegiances are tradeable. What do you think defines public and political life in this region beyond interstate conflict, assertions of competing and conflicting identities, and protracted crisis due to local and national grievances?

The driving factor in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and also to some extent in Eritrea is money – political money. If we can understand three things in these countries, we can really understand how politics works.

The first is what the Sudanese call the political budget – money that is available to a political operator, a head of state, head of security, or a regional governor – that he would spend to securing political services and loyalties and there is no need to account for it. Another is the price of loyalty – a political market. How much does he have to pay to get the allegiance of certain members of the elite and what they control, whether it is a militia, votes, or an administrative department. Finally, there is the political business model where they may want to enrich themselves; want to reinvest the money in a project which is ideological; or defend their communities’ interests and how they do it. It is also about how they use violence and coercion in support of that project and regulating the market.

Some political operators very astutely use violence, say Paul Kagame of Rwanda. He runs a very tight and centralized ship. If you challenge him seriously, he will kill you.

Q: Even if you run away from the country.

Exactly, and he uses the threat of assassination – and occasionally assassination – to enforce his political business model. It is like Rwanda Inc. It is run on a business model.

Others have different models. Some of them are better at it than others. Hussien Al Bashir of Sudan is extremely skilled at running a very complex, rather unstable business model, in a very difficult environment, and adjusting as circumstances change. Salva Kiir of South Sudan is almost incompetent and a very poor political business manager. He has made some very serious mistakes as a result of which South Sudan is in the crisis it is in today.

Q: Where do you place Eritrea’s Isaias Afeworqi?

Isaias is very interesting because he, like Kagame, runs a very tight political business model. His particular skill has been to keep the source of finance away from the control of the army. Eritrean generals, with one or two exceptions, may be corrupt but they do not have independent political budgets. They cannot operate independently because they do not have access to that money. That money comes from the Red Sea Corporation and its various shady activities, the Diaspora tax – which comes through party mechanisms – from mining and now from security cooperation payments from the Saudis and the Emiratis. Isaias does not need to have a state apparatus as long as he uses that money very judiciously and carefully, as he does. He is skilled at that to maintain himself in power.

Q: Yet you remain positive about the region’s prospects for democratization and the advent of rule of law in the end. Don’t you find that absurd? Where does the optimism come from?

In the short-term there are many problems in all of these countries. I am very pessimistic about most of them. I am optimistic in that I see potential ways of managing a transition to a more orderly system – a more democratic and open system. This does not come through the conventional political route. It comes through two factors: if it is possible to organise political finance – where political money comes from.

Somaliland is a great example – the business class in Somaliland got together and provided political money to the government and the political elites, on the condition that they stabilize the government. Another is Ethiopia where its political money is largely from taxation and some aid.

Q: But controlled by the powers that be.

Ethiopia is at a very critical moment. There is the potential for it to go in a highly marketized and monetized political direction. There is also the potential, if the EPRDF leadership responds to the current situation with what I see as the appropriate measures to consolidate, to turn the developmental successes into a politically solid democratization project.

What is interesting about Sudan, particularly with the squeeze from the oil revenue, is that the Sudanese business class is beginning to assert itself, and that has the potential for stabilizing politics in northern Sudan. There are some very immediate dangers of democracy, to do with Sudan’s engagement with the wider politics of the Middle East and the growth of the defense and security establishments.

Q: Partly, you sound like you do not like the liberal model of politics. Yet, you encourage financing from the indigenous and local business communities. Don’t you see conflict in that?

I do not like the monetization of politics, as I do not like political markets. As an old leftist, I would much rather have a democratic system rooted in popular consent with political freedoms. But that has not happened; let us be realistic. If we are faced with a global and regional order in which money drives politics, let us see how we can make money drive politics for a more inclusive, open and non-violent politics. I believe that is possible.

Q: All the solutions induced from the outside are structured within the old, traditional state formation framework. Do you think this is time to think out of the box and come up with a completely different formula?

Definitely! Again, Ethiopia is perhaps an exception. It is a place where the variants on the traditional state formation model are possible, if there is democratization. If there isn’t, it can become a political marketplace. In the other countries, we do not see state formation happening – none of them. We rather see it in reverse. What we see is outside attempts to build institutions and bring security sector reforms, co-opted by factional politics within the system.

International donors persist in believing that there is an institutional formula that can prevail in these countries. And there isn’t. There will not be one until we get the political finance right. Either we are not dealing with it, or in fact, elements like counterterrorism or political financing from the Gulf countries completely destroy the institutionalization.

Q: Rhetorically though, Ethiopian government officials say democratizing Ethiopia is an existential matter; the practice is different. As someone who has been engaging them for so long, what do you think is holding them from opening up and liberalizing the political space?

I do not know. They ought to have the confidence in the analysis and the formula of a democratic developmental state. We need to have universities and think-tanks and research institutes that can debate these ideas. We need to have that political, academic, and media infrastructure just as we need the physical infrastructure. Then it would not be difficult for this country to overcome its current problems, for they are not intrinsically difficult to solve. They become difficult to solve if the response is to deny them and to have security responses.

Q: You seem to consider this government as more of a developmental than a democratic state.

I would like to see them live up to their democratic aspirations and logic that is in the democratic developmental state. Up until now, they have not done so.

Q: Why have you, in your book, chosen to brush aside identity politics, which used to be a huge factor in how politics is run in all these countries, particularly in Ethiopia?

Identity politics is almost always derivative of something else. I do not deny it is there; but, I think it is secondary. There is a tendency when people talk about identity politics to assume that identity differences are immutable or irreconcilable. I do not think that is the case.

Q: But they have a competing nature.

If you take Somalia, and look at alliances across and among and within clans over the last 25 years, you would see every type of alliance. If you take Darfur, you would see that allegiances were determined more by opportunism and financial inducement than by ethnicity. And in South Sudan, there was ethnic mobilization for political reasons but the war broke out, and it then took a deeply problematic ethnic turn. But the driving factors in the South Sudan crisis are not ethnic. They are political and economic.

Ethiopia is a little bit different. Its Constitution has adopted the principle of nationalities as an organising principle for politics.

Q: There are changing dynamics in the emerging configuration in relation to the Arabian Peninsula, which has created a new balance of power in the Horn of Africa. Saudi wants to establish a military base in Djibouti in trying to assert its interests. It has a coalition relationship with Eritrea and when you consider the relationship between Eritrea and Djibouti, there is a whole new dynamic. If you were to advise policymakers in Ethiopia, what would that be to help them navigate in these new dynamics?

Ethiopia needs to overcome the legacy of mistrust with Egypt, and the Arab world. There needs to be a mechanism for those on the African side of the Red Sea to engage with those on the Arab side. At the moment there is the African Union (AU) and there is the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Ethiopia is the dominant force in IGAD, and host of the AU. There should be a diplomatic initiative, first of all, to talk about issues so that we can identify the common interests and goals. There are many goals that everybody agrees on. No one wants terrorism, or al Qaeda. No one wants the shipping lanes to be interrupted by piracy or maritime terrorism.

Q: How is it possible for Ethiopia to abandon its historical mistrust while allegations continue that countries of the GCC, particularly Qatar, and Egypt are funneling money into forces that work to destabilize the Ethiopian state?

Those are allegations, and this is the nature of international politics. There are problems between countries. There are also common interests. Take waters; the Egyptians have technically recognised that it makes sense for Ethiopia to store Nile waters at a high altitude in the Blue Nile Gorge, provided that there is sufficient cooperation among the riparian states to allow the water flow to continue. But the presumption of engagement should not be that the other is out to destroy.

Q: You have known Meles since his time in the field and you have interacted with him on several levels. What do you think he would have done if he were alive today, in this situation of very fast changing dynamics in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula?

He would have had an activist foreign policy, to start with. He would have been out there trying to set the agenda, define it for the wider region, in such a way that it was compatible with Ethiopia’s basic national interest which is accelerated development. He would have said, “it is no longer sufficient to look at just the immediate neighbourhood, we need to look one step beyond that – to look as far as Egypt, and the Gulf. Let us move towards a common definition of security in this region.”

He would also have come with a political economic analysis of the problems unfolding internally. And any security action that he took would have been in pursuit of and subordinate to a political economic strategy.

Q: In your book, you have chosen to gloss over Djibouti, and have not criticized Ethiopia with as much vigour as you did with the other countries. You are criticized for being soft on Ethiopia because of your longstanding relationship with the late Prime Minister and the current EPRDF veterans beginning with their days in the field.

Djibouti is not a big country and I did not deal with it. I apologise to the Djiboutians and I should remedy that in the next edition. The reason I did not delve into the political economy of Ethiopia in such depth is two-fold. The origin of this book is a debate with Meles. I took it as my opportunity to expand my understanding of Meles’ approach.

Ethiopia is not a political market; it has not emerged in that way. Politics is not run on the monetary basis. You do not have that transactional politics of money that you have in Sudan or Somalia. Politics is run on a different basis, and corruption is separate from politics. The money that people get from corruption, they either use it for personal wealth or they reinvest. It is not invested in politics. But that may change – and this is the key point. If there is not a liberalization of the political sphere in such a way that the politics shifts from authoritarian developmentism, to being the politics of a liberal development, it will become the politics of a political market. That would be a dangerous direction for this country to go in.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/03/28/interview-with-alex-de-waal-in-addis-fortune/feed/1South Sudan is entering an extremely dangerous phasehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/03/25/south-sudan-is-entering-an-extremely-dangerous-phase/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/03/25/south-sudan-is-entering-an-extremely-dangerous-phase/#respondFri, 25 Mar 2016 11:06:55 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3266In a WPF policy briefing of March 24, 2016, Alex de Waal warns that South Sudan is entering a dangerous new phase. Below is from the introduction to briefing.

This policy briefing provides an analysis of the risks that South Sudan faces given the current convergent economic, security and political crises on the eve of the overdue establishment of the Transitional Government of National Unity (TGoNU).

South Sudan today is a collapsed political marketplace. The country’s political market was structured by competitive militarized clientelism for access to oil rents. Those oil rents have almost disappeared but the structure of competition is unchanged and the price of loyalty has not reduced to a level commensurate with the available political funding. The result is that political loyalty and services are rewarded with license to plunder. This is inherently self-destructive. South Sudan’s political economy is being consumed to feed its political-military elite.

The convergent economic, security and political crises mean that South Sudan is entering an extremely dangerous phase.

This policy brief provides tools for analysis rather than recom-mendations for action. The dominant political discourse on South Sudan is framed in ethnic terms: this briefing seeks to provide alternative political-economic concepts and language.

It points to the need to stabilize South Sudan’s political marketplace before there can be any prospect of sustainable peace, let alone a transition to an institutionalized political order. Policymakers need to attend particularly to the options for modest increases in political funding (notably through the renegotiation of the transitional financial arrangements and oil pipeline fees with Khartoum) and measures to reduce political uncertainty.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/03/25/south-sudan-is-entering-an-extremely-dangerous-phase/feed/0On the Conviction of Karadzic: Looking beyond 40 yearshttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/03/24/on-the-conviction-of-karadzic-looking-beyond-40-years/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/03/24/on-the-conviction-of-karadzic-looking-beyond-40-years/#respondThu, 24 Mar 2016 15:11:51 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3263Today, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) sentenced Radovan Karadzić, the political leader of the Bosnian Serbs through the war (1992 – 1995), when he led them into disgrace by trading legitimate concerns about the character of political life in Bosnia’s post-Yugoslav existence for the pursuit of systematic, group targeted violence against their neighbors. [...]]]>Today, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) sentenced Radovan Karadzić, the political leader of the Bosnian Serbs through the war (1992 – 1995), when he led them into disgrace by trading legitimate concerns about the character of political life in Bosnia’s post-Yugoslav existence for the pursuit of systematic, group targeted violence against their neighbors.

In anticipation, a friend of mine who survived the Bosnian Serbs assaults against her hometown—and who still searches for the remains of her grandparents, uncle and others who were killed in the attack—shared this poem, by Kenyan-born, Somali poem, Warsan Shire.

later that night/ i held an atlas in my lap/ ran my fingers across the whole/ world/ and whispered/ where does it hurt?

it answered/ everywhere/ everywhere/ everywhere

By mid-afternoon at The Hague, her wait and the wait of many others deeply invested in the results of this trial was over. The sentence was issued: forty years in prison. Karadzić was found guilty of genocide for Srebrenica, consistent with the Tribunal’s previous judgments, and multiple counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including persecution, extermination, deportation, forcible transfer and murder. The judges did not convict him of genocide for the pattern of violence across areas seized by the Bosnian Serbs at the start of the war in 1992, as named in the indictment: Kljuc, Sanski Most, Bratunac, Foca, Prijedor, Vlasenica and Zvornik. That latter five of these were among the deadliest towns during the entire war, along with Srebrenica, Trnovo, Visegrad, Rogatica, and Kalinovik.

Ten Deadliest Towns during Bosnia War (1992 – 1995).

Source: Map made by Bridget Conley-Zilkic based on analysis of Research and Documentation Center data by Stefan Costalli and Francesco Niccolo Moro. 2012. “Ethnicity and strategy in the Bosnian civil war: Explanations for the severity of violence in Bosnian municipalities.” Journal of Peace Research 49(6): 801 – 815. Appendix.

The decision to convict Karadzić for genocide in Srebrenica reflected the Tribunal’s previous rulings that the highly organized attempt to kill all able-bodied males in this instance met the legal threshold for genocide. The decision not to convict him of genocide for actions elsewhere hinged on what the judges deemed to be a more limited degree of physical destruction—killing— and the decision that genocide was not the only reasonable interpretation of Bosnian Serb actions, hence, there were insufficient grounds to find an intent to destroy (as required for genocide) the Bosnian Muslims.

Legal proceedings are as weak (or as strong) as any of the ‘policy’ tools for responding to such overwhelming violence, each of which is limited by the cold fact that there is no making this right. Nonetheless, weak as response mechanisms are, the effort to use them is even more important than their immediate outputs. History’s long arc forgets the details, bends towards places we cannot know. But its curve is defined by the decisions of thousands to embark in the struggle over what the future will include. Today’s decision by the ICTY will certainly be heatedly debated—and the absence of a conviction for genocide for the violence of 1992 will celebrated or decried, depending on one’s position on the conflict.

Set this aside, just for a moment, and remember all the work of our friends and colleagues in Bosnia and beyond who refuse to accept that the violence was inevitable or natural, but who insist that it was made possible and directed by individuals, who can be held responsible. Only in this recognition is Bosnia’s future possible. So let this be a day when the arc leaned however slightly towards justice, in the rich sense, that is, towards social justice, not merely criminal proceedings.

For my friend, who grew up in the shadow of decisions made by Karadzić and others to respond to uncertainty and fear by provoking violence and organizing for its comprehensive and relentless use to alter the Bosnian map, I hope there is some solace. If not today and if not through this decision, then in the work of rebuilding the country and seeking truth that she and many other brave Bosnians have committed to every day since the war began. May they be the ones who guide the path forward.

Back in 2002, Meles Zenawi, then prime minister of Ethiopia, drafted a foreign policy and national security white paper for his country. Before finalizing it, he confided to me a “nightmare scenario” — not included in the published version — that could upend the balance of power in the Horn of Africa region.

The scenario went like this: Sudan is partitioned into a volatile south and an embittered north. The south becomes a sinkhole of instability, while the north is drawn into the Arab orbit. Meanwhile, Egypt awakens from its decades-long torpor on African issues and resumes its historical stance of attempting to undermine Ethiopia, with which it has a long-standing dispute over control of the Nile River. It does so by trying to bring Eritrea and Somalia into its sphere of influence, thereby isolating the government in Addis Ababa from its direct neighbors. Finally, Saudi Arabia begins directing its vast financial resources to support Ethiopia’s rivals and sponsor Wahhabi groups that challenge the traditionally dominant Sufis in the region, generating conflict and breeding militancy within the Muslim communities.

Fourteen years later, reality has exceeded Zenawi’s nightmare scenario; not only has every one of his fears come to pass, but Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi King Salman bin Saud are working hand-in-glove on regional security issues — notably in Yemen and Libya — which has raised the stakes of the long-running Egypt-Ethiopia rivalry. If the worsening tensions in the Horn of Africa erupt into military conflict, as seems increasingly possible, it wouldn’t just be a disaster for the region — it could also be a catastrophe for the global economy. Almost all of the maritime trade between Europe and Asia, about $700 billion each year, passes through the Bab al-Mandab, the narrow straits on the southern entrance to the Red Sea, en route to the Suez Canal. An endless procession of cargo ships and oil tankers passes within sight — and artillery range — of both the Yemeni and African shores of the straits.

Zenawi’s nightmare scenario, in other words, may soon become the world’s — and no one has a white paper to prepare for it.

A crisis in the Horn of Africa has been a long time in the making. The regional rivalries of today date back to 1869, when the Suez Canal was opened to shipping, instantly making the Red Sea one of the British Empire’s most important strategic arteries, since almost all of its trade with India passed that way. Then as now, the security of Egypt depended on control of the Nile headwaters, 80 percent of which originate in Ethiopia. Fearful that Ethiopia would dam the river and stop the flow, Egypt and its colonial masters attempted to keep Ethiopia weak and encircled. They did this in part by divvying up rights to the Nile’s waters without consulting Addis Ababa. For example, the British-drafted Nile Waters Agreements, signed in 1929 and 1959, excluded Ethiopia from any share of the waters. As a result, Egypt and Ethiopia became regional rivals, intensely suspicious of each other.

The Nile remains a high-profile source of tension between the two countries to this day; Sisi’s state visit last year to Ethiopia failed to achieve much, in large part because of Egypt’s unease over a huge Ethiopian hydroelectric project on the Blue Nile. But another important source of friction between the two countries has centered for some time on two of Ethiopia’s volatile neighbors — Eritrea and Somalia — which Cairo has long viewed as useful partners to secure its interests along the Red Sea littoral. Ethiopia has shown it will resist what it views as Egyptian encroachment near its borders. From 2001 to 2004, for instance, Ethiopia and Egypt backed rival factions in Somalia, which prolonged that country’s destructive civil war.

These fractures in the Horn of Africa have been deepened by Saudi Arabia’s reassessment of its security strategy. Worried that the United States was withdrawing from its role as security guarantor for the wider region, it resolved to build up its armed forces and project its power into strategic hinterlands and sea lanes to the north and south. In practice, that has meant winning over less powerful countries along the African coast of the Red Sea — Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia — a region that Ethiopia has sought to place within its sphere of influence.

The Saudi presence along the African Red Sea coast has grown more sharply pronounced since its March 2015 military intervention in Yemen, which drew in Egypt as part of a coalition of Sunni Arab states battling Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The coalition obtained combat units from Sudan and Eritrea, and scrambled to secure the entire African shore of the Red Sea. Then in January of this year — under pressure from Saudi Arabia — Djibouti, Somalia, and Sudan all cut diplomatic ties with Iran. By far the most significant of these was Sudan, which has had long-standing political and military ties with Tehran. For years, Iranian warships called at Port Sudan, and Iranian clandestine supplies to the Palestinian militant group Hamas passed freely along Sudan’s Red Sea coast (occasionally intercepted by Israeli jet fighters). Now Sudan is part of the Saudi-led coalition pummeling the Iran-backed Houthis.

But the most important geopolitical outcome of the Saudi-led Yemen intervention has been the rehabilitation of Eritrea, which capitalized on the war to escape severe political and economic isolation. After it gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993, Eritrea fought wars with each of its three land neighbors — Djibouti, Sudan, and Ethiopia. It also fought a brief war with Yemen over the disputed Hanish Islands in the Red Sea in 1995, after which it declined to reestablish diplomatic relations with Sana’a and instead backed the Houthi rebels against the government.

After the Ethio-Eritrean border war of 1998-2000, Eritrea became a garrison state — with an army of 320,000, it has one the highest soldier-to-population ratios in the world — and Ethiopia led an international campaign to isolate it at the African Union, United Nations, and other international bodies. This was made easier by Eritrea’s increasingly rogue behavior, including backing al-Shabab militants in Somalia. The imposition of U.N. sanctions in 2009 brought the country to the brink of financial collapse.

But the war in Yemen gave Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki a get-out-of-jail-free card. He switched sides in the Yemen conflict and allied himself with Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners. As a result, the Eritrean president is now publicly praised by the Yemeni government and welcomed in Arab capitals. His government is also reaping handsome if secret financial rewards in exchange for its diplomatic about-face.

But the fact that Eritrea has decisively escaped Ethiopia’s trap does not mean it has suddenly become a more viable dictatorship. On the contrary, the renewed geostrategic interest in the country and its 750-mile Red Sea coast make the question of who succeeds Afewerki, who has been in power for a quarter century, all the more contentious — especially since Ethiopia has long sought to hand pick a replacement for the Eritrean president. Already, Ethiopia mounts regular small military sorties on the countries’ common border to let Eritrea know who is the regional powerbroker. It would not take much for these tensions to explode into open war.

Saudi Arabia’s revamped security strategy has also meant a sudden influx of Arab funds into Somalia. The Saudis promised $50 million to Mogadishu in exchange for closing the Iranian embassy, for example, while other Arab countries and Turkey have spent lavishly to court the allegiance of Somali politicians. This is partly intra-Sunni competition — Turkish- and Qatar-backed candidates pitted against those funded by the Wahhabi alliance — but it also reflects Somalia’s increasing geopolitical importance. In the country’s national elections scheduled for September, Arab- and Wahhabi-affiliated candidates for parliament could very well sweep the board.

All of this has made Ethiopia very nervous — as it should. The tremors of the region’s shifting tectonic plates may not directly cause a major crisis. The more probable outcome is deeper divisions between Egypt and Ethiopia, which could cause a proliferation or deepening of proxy disputes elsewhere in the region, such as the two countries’ competing efforts to shape the future leadership of Eritrea and Somalia.

Still, it’s impossible to rule out the possibility of a dramatic security crisis stemming from the shifting regional balance of power. It could come in the form of renewed fighting over Eritrea’s still-disputed land borders, or spinoffs from the war in Yemen, such as the eruption of maritime terrorism. That would lead to a dramatic escalation of the militarization of the region. It would also threaten to entirely close the region’s sea lanes — the ones that are so central to global commerce.

Unfortunately, the international community is sorely unprepared for such an outcome. A well-established, multi-country naval coalition patrols the sea lanes off Somalia’s coast to combat piracy, but no international political mechanism currently exists to diffuse a regional crisis. In the relevant bureaucracies that might be called upon in an emergency — from the United Nations to the U.S. State Department — Africa and the Middle East are handled by separate divisions that tend not to coordinate. The EU’s special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Alex Rondos, has taken the lead in developing an integrated strategy for both shores of the Red Sea, but the EU’s foreign policy instruments are ill-suited to hard security challenges such as this that span two continents.

For its part, the African Union has developed a sophisticated set of conflict management practices for its region. It has taken a hard line against coups and pioneered the principle of non-indifference in the internal affairs of member states — foreshadowing the doctrine of “responsibility to protect.” Its summits serve as gatherings where peer pressure is used for the informal management of conflicts, with more success than is usually recognized. The Gulf Cooperation Council, the regional alliance of Gulf monarchies that would inevitably be involved in a major regional dispute of this kind, should learn from these African best practices. That would require a dramatic change in the mind-set of Arab royal families, which assume that their relationship with Africans is one of patron and client. Too often, the Africans reinforce that mind-set by acting as supplicants. For example, when the African Union sent a delegation to the Gulf countries in November, the agenda wasn’t strategic dialogue or partnership — it was fundraising.

But to prevent Zenawi’s “nightmare scenario” from coming to fruition, the Africans and the Arabs need to recognize the Red Sea as a shared strategic space that demands their coordination. A sensible place to start would be by convening a Red Sea forum composed of the GCC and the AU — plus other interested parties such as the United Nations, European Union, and Asian trading partners — to open lines of communication, discuss strategic objectives for peace and security and agree on mechanisms for minimizing risk. The fast-emerging Red Sea security challenge is well suited to that most prosaic of diplomatic initiatives — a talking shop.

The problem is, all these actors tend to start talking only after a crisis has already exploded. Here’s a timely warning.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/03/18/africas-700-billion-problem-waiting-to-happen/feed/4The Business of Peace in Africahttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/03/08/the-business-of-peace-in-africa/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/03/08/the-business-of-peace-in-africa/#commentsTue, 08 Mar 2016 14:31:40 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3256Alex de Waal has an opinion piece in today’s Los Angeles Times:

The 19th century Republican Sen. Mark Hanna famously remarked that two things were important in politics: The first was money, and he couldn’t remember what the second one was.

Hanna would be at home in the mercenary politics of peace in Africa and the Middle East today, where political parties, rebel movements and even governments are run on a business model. Money can’t buy anything or anyone, but without cash flow and a sharp set of business skills, any political entrepreneur will quickly fall by the wayside.

I learned this the hard way as a member of the African Union mediation team that tried and failed to negotiate a peace agreement to end the war in Darfur, Sudan, a decade ago. The cabal that ran the government was less interested in any Islamist ideology than in bargaining over the machinery of power in a chaotic province. The rebels were haggling for the maximum cash handouts. For sure, some of them were simply interested in lining their pockets. But it wasn’t simple corruption. The more honest among them knew full well that if they were to abandon armed rebellion for civil politics, they needed a “political budget”— money to run an election campaign, to rent the allegiances of local chiefs and neighborhood bosses, and buy all the other services needed to grease the wheels of political office.

We — the outsiders — called this peacemaking and democratic transformation. For the Darfurians, the goal was to secure a political budget to become a player in the political marketplace.

Our team of diplomats and conflict resolution experts — plus our backers from the U.S. State Department — couldn’t clinch a deal, because we didn’t have the cash in hand to buy off the sundry rebels who demanded a political payment if they were to sign. And for the Sudanese government the peace agreement wasn’t a solemn and binding commitment, but a bargain in the bazaar, only as good as the market conditions on the day it was signed. When the value of some rebels went up the next day, or down, the deal was up for renegotiation. We were flummoxed.

From the Sahara to Afghanistan, by way of Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Horn of Africa, political business managers use a simple business calculus to understand what’s happening in a war or a peace process, and predict its outcome. Three things count: the players’ political budgets, the prevailing price of loyalty and their business skills. Forget the complex statistical indicators of Foreign Policy’s Fragile States Index: these are the rules of thumb in real politics. And they tell us which peace processes may succeed, and which will fail.

South Sudan’s peace will fail. The newly independent country plunged into internecine war in late 2013. Widely portrayed as a tribal conflict between the Dinka of President Salva Kiir and the Nuer of his challenger Riek Machar, this was more accurately seen as the kleptocrats falling out. The war started because, in an act of extraordinary foolishness, the government of South Sudan responded to a dispute with its northern neighbor, and former oppressor, over the price to be pumping oil along a pipeline to the sea, by shutting down its national oil production. Reliant for 98% of its budget on oil revenue, South Sudan soon ran out of money, and a ruling elite accustomed to living like oil sheiks in a land of extreme poverty fell to fighting one another over the shrunken national patrimony.

The problem that caused the war wasn’t so much corruption as the crass mismanagement of a corrupt system. Today the contenders have signed a peace deal, under pressure from the Africans and the U.S. — but while the oil has been switched back on, the price has plummeted and the government is bankrupt. The problem now is that the elite’s appetite is undiminished — the price of loyalty is elastic upward, but not downward — but the political budget isn’t there. South Sudan’s business managers can’t carry on trading, so they are turning to outright repression. The sad truth is there’s no quick fix for South Sudan’s bloody impasse.

Somalia’s peace is challenged in a different way. The government of President Hassan Sheik Mohamud is generously backed by foreign sponsors, including the U.S. and the European Union. Neighboring African countries provide troops under an African Union flag to fight the extremist insurgents of the Shabab. But President Mohamud is struggling. Though he’s cash-rich, the price of loyalty is too high. The reason: Somalia’s political marketplace is completely unregulated, and open to all comers. Not only do his Western and African backers bypass the government to pour funds directly into the coffers of provincial leaders, but Arab governments are doing exactly the same thing, with fewer strings attached.

President Mohamud and his Western patrons missed their best chance to dominate Somalia’s political market. Had they organized the Somali business class — dynamic and well-resourced — to set the rules of the political game, they could have stabilized the country. But they put a constitutional assembly before a chamber of commerce, and got their sequencing wrong. The country’s chaos reflects the disorder among its diverse paymasters. Ironically, order may come because of the money that has started pouring into Somalia from Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Gulf. The gulf kingdoms see Somalia as the hinterland of Yemen, where they are embroiled in a war, and they are paying Somali politicians handsomely to come on board. Elections this year will probably see pro-Arab candidates sweep the board, all of them professing versions of Islamic law. That might just be enough to draw the majority of the Shabab militants back into civil politics.

Winning the peace in the Horn of Africa — and its neighbors across the huge arc of turbulence from the Maghreb to Central Asia — means studying the warlord’s playbook, updated for the 21st century. Countries beset by factionalism, corruption and violence can’t be fixed with the 20th century tool kit of peace talks leading to new constitutions, plus using aid to build institutions, backed by U.N. peacekeepers. Worse, the U.S. strategy of outsourcing counter-terrorism programs to regional proxies just funnels ready cash into precisely the most skilled and ruthless operators in the political marketplace, as well as giving them the means for repression.

Rule No. 1 in the warlord’s handbook is, keep your finance secret. It follows that there’s no chance for peace and democracy until the political funders begin insisting on them.

The chronic crises in the Horn of Africa demand that we target corruption and arms trading. But that’s not enough: It’s lawful money — from counter-terrorism, oil sales and gifts from wealthy neighbors — that funds political businesses. This money can’t be stopped, but it can be regulated. Reforming political funding is hard enough at home, let alone halfway round the world, on the home territories of skilled operators. But the warlord’s handbook tells us that it’s the place to begin.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/03/08/the-business-of-peace-in-africa/feed/1To Intervene or Not to Intervene: An inside view of the AU’s decision-making on Article 4(h) and Burundihttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/03/01/to-intervene-or-not-to-intervene-an-inside-view-of-the-aus-decision-making-on-article-4h-and-burundi/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/03/01/to-intervene-or-not-to-intervene-an-inside-view-of-the-aus-decision-making-on-article-4h-and-burundi/#respondTue, 01 Mar 2016 14:44:38 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3251Yesterday, the African Union (AU) issued a Communiqué on the visit of the High-level Delegation to Burundi, composed of South African President Jacob Zuma, Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, Senegalese President Macky Sall, Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba, and Ethiopian President Hailemariam Dessalegn, in addition to AU Commissioner for Peace and SecurityAmbassador Smail Chergui and a special envoy of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni (who is charged with facilitating the mediation). In short, a cohort of African Presidential peers authorized, in the vernacular, with pushing Burundi’s President Nkurunziza into taking positive actions to defuse the violence and political crisis.

The Communiqué included some potentially significant advances: notably, the agreement with the government to send 100 human rights monitors and 100 military observers. The AU also noted the Burundian government’s decision to “withdraw[al] of the international arrest warrants issued against some Burundian citizens, the reopen[ing] of a private radio station and radio-television broadcasting station as well as the announcement of the imminent release of detainees.” How these steps are carried out and the progress of mediation and internal dialogue will be important to watch.

The engagement of this Presidential delegation belies the negative reading of the AU’s decision at its January summit not to authorize military intervention against Burundi’s wishes. Decried as a crass example of allowing ‘sovereignty’ to trump human rights concerns, the decision warrants revisiting in light of the AUs continued efforts to support political engagement. This is precisely the goal of our new occasional paper by Solomon Derrso, “To Intervene or Not to Intervene: An inside view of the AU’s decision-making on Article 4(h) and Burundi.” The insights apply not only to Burundi today, but also to how the AU may interpret its Article 4(h), allowing for non-consensual armed interventions in certain circumstances, in future cases.

Dr. Solomon Ayele Dersso is a senior legal scholar and analyst of peace and security and current African affairs, whose expertise and publications cover the role of the African Union in peace and security, the responsibility to protect and transitional justice in Africa. In this paper, he reveals the inside story of decision-making at the African Union on whether or not to send a military mission to Burundi.

From the Introduction:

Perhaps the most significant outcome of the 26th summit of the African Union (AU) was the decision scrapping the plan to deploy troops to Burundi for human protection purposes. In December 2015 the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC), the continental body’s standing collective decision-making body on peace and security, announced a precedent-setting invocation of the AU’s Article 4(h) authorizing the deployment of a military mission to Burundi to quell violence related to disputed elections. The January 2016 summit marked a fresh consideration of the earlier decision. As quickly as the summit came to a close on 31 January 2016, those who followed the crisis in Burundi started expressing disappointment with the failure to authorize intervention.

In a Foreign Policy article titled, “The Burundi intervention that wasn’t,” Ty McCormick lamented that the Burundi decision threw the credibility of the AU into question. Expressing manifest disappointment at the unmet expectations that boots would soon deploy to Burundi, South Africa’s popular online magazine the Daily Maverick declared, “African Union goes backwards on Burundi.” Described elsewhere as a “180-degree turn” or as “backtracking,” most analysts have presented the case as a clear manifestation of state or regime security trumping human security.

Such analysis is incomplete. Central to the AU’s decision-making were issues of substance and procedure that can only be understood in relation to the unfolding discussions before and during the AU summit. This policy briefing examines in detail how and why the AU summit arrived at its decision on MAPROBU. It further discusses the implications of the AU summit decision vis-à-vis the situation in Burundi.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/03/01/to-intervene-or-not-to-intervene-an-inside-view-of-the-aus-decision-making-on-article-4h-and-burundi/feed/0Assessing the Anti-Atrocity Toolboxhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/29/assessing-the-anti-atrocity-toolbox/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/29/assessing-the-anti-atrocity-toolbox/#respondMon, 29 Feb 2016 12:59:51 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3248WPF has just published an Occasional Paper, “Assessing the Anti-Atrocity Toolbox” by Bridget Conley-Zilkic, Saskia Brechenmacher and Aditya Sarkar, that asks what do we know about the effectiveness of various policy mechanisms that often the examining scholarly literature that tests the impact of various policy measures often cited as potential measures that state or international organizations could [...]]]>WPF has just published an Occasional Paper, “Assessing the Anti-Atrocity Toolbox” by Bridget Conley-Zilkic, Saskia Brechenmacher and Aditya Sarkar, that asks what do we know about the effectiveness of various policy mechanisms that often the examining scholarly literature that tests the impact of various policy measures often cited as potential measures that state or international organizations could deploy when faced with a situation that demonstrates or threatens mass violence against civilians.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The international failure to prevent and mitigate mass violence against civilians in the post-Cold War era, notably in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda, sparked a series of stock-taking efforts within international organizations, national governments and the broader policy community. Emerging from these reviews was a new set of insights that form the foundation of today’s anti-atrocity policies:

Reducing violence against civilians is one of the most important measures by which the success of international interventions should be measured;

Waiting until violence meets or approaches the legal definition of genocide means delaying responses until it is too late. This recognition provoked two shifts: a shift away from the legal term ‘genocide’ to other vocabularies, like ‘mass atrocities,’ and a growing emphasis on ‘prevention;’

Preventative action and early response increase the likelihood of success of any policy measure, and decrease the human and financial costs of responding;

International response should not be limited to all or nothing. Considerable energy was spent elaborating the conditions in which coercive military interventions in the name of civilian protection could be undertaken, yet effective responses short of this are both possible and desirable.

This final point begged the question: what is the broader range of policy mechanisms that can be brought to bear on a situation to prevent, respond to and aid recovery from mass violence?

Attempting to specify these measures, policy analysts have over the past two decades stocked the “Anti-Atrocity Toolbox” with a wide range of diplomatic, economic, legal and military instruments. Policy debates regarding the application and likely outcomes of these ‘tools’ have generally been driven by case studies. These are informative, but may lack generalizability or suffer from selection bias—that is, the tendency to only cite examples that bolster one’s argument. While scholars have begun examining the impact of these same major tools in cross-national statistical studies, their efforts are rarely incorporated into policy debates. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by reviewing the recent social science literature on the effectiveness of policy measures frequently include in the anti-atrocity toolbox. Our aim is to provide insights into emerging areas of consensus and highlight ongoing disagreements and gaps in knowledge.

KEY TAKE-AWAYS

A number of cross-cutting themes emerge from this review that help establish the broader context for evaluating international atrocity prevention and response. We address these first, before introducing the most compelling points of consensus regarding the impact of specific policy tools.

How we study mass atrocity and relevant policy tools

Definitions and expectations of success vary: Success is defined differently across studies. Some measure it as a relative decrease in violence against civilians, whereas others examine absolute improvements in human security, such as the end of all or most civilian targeting.

Beyond killing: The studies reviewed in this paper overwhelmingly focus on killing as the only or primary measure of mass violence. We recognize that this is a significant limitation, as it fails to account for variations in the systematic use of nonlethal violence against civilians – including forced displacement, sexual and gender-based violence or enforced disappearances.

We only count what is visible: Most cross-national studies rely on datasets that track civilian killing through media reports and investigations by human rights organizations. These are rigorous and valuable tools, but like any method of estimating fatalities in complex environments, they are rarely comprehensive. It is important to understand the limitations of our current methods of tracking violence.

What we know about mass atrocities

The likelihood of any policy tool achieving its intended impact improves with adept, nuanced and case-specific diplomatic strategy. Responses need to be embedded in a broader political vision as well as strong regional and international coalitions. No tool functions well absent this strategic leadership.

The global context is in flux: Overall instances of genocide are in decline, despite ongoing examples of extensive civilian targeting. The type of regime most likely to commit mass atrocities has shifted from authoritarian states to states in transition, with non-state actors playing increasingly important roles. The Global War on Terror (GWOT) and violent contestation resulting from competition for regional influence further complicate the roles certain international actors can play in the most acute crises.

Across the board, the ability of outside actors to impact perpetrator behavior increases when the target state is an ally, as well as when international and regional consensus is strong.

High-intensity versus low-intensity: Genocide and mass atrocities are relatively rare occurrences. There are comparatively few cases from which to draw conclusions. Further, the factors that influence this form of high-intensity violence may differ from those that impact lower levels of violence that are often sustained as a regular part of political contestation in poorly institutionalized contexts.

Differences in numbers or in nature? To improve civilian protection across multiple contexts, a numeric threshold defining “mass atrocities” may be less helpful for policymakers than understanding differences in the relative capacity of key actors in an atrocity setting. For instance, sudden changes in economic aid or conflict dynamics that alter the balance of power between warring factions can change the vulnerability of different civilian groups, potentially increasing the risk of mass violence.

Not all good things go together: The tools that may most effectively prevent, mitigate, or end atrocities may not be the ones that best promote democracy and human rights, and vice-versa.

Key findings regarding the impact of anti-atrocity tools

Diplomatic Tools: These include regular diplomatic interactions, public or private condemnations of violence, conflict or crisis mediation, and the suspension of diplomatic relations, among other measures. According to the studies reviewed in this paper, diplomatic actions that are most likely to improve situations at risk of atrocities are: speaking out frankly and publicly against the targeting of vulnerable groups, reinforcing principles of governance that support nonviolent leadership change, and maintaining diplomatic relations while being aware of ways in which diplomatic relations can be perceived as implicit acceptance of on-going policies. Once mass atrocities are underway, naming and shaming can help reduce the scale of violence against civilians, mediation can help conclude conflict, and, depending on the nature of the post-war settlement, peace agreements can possibly ward off post-conflict atrocities. However, diplomatic efforts are unlikely to fundamentally alter perpetrators’ choice to deploy violence against civilians in situations of ongoing high-level violence.

Economic Tools: Development aid can be a powerful tool for increasing stability. However, in countries at risk of mass atrocities, case-specific understanding of how aid interacts with existing political and social mechanisms for restraining or mobilizing intergroup violence is crucial. Economic sanctions have a fairly poor track record of compelling change. While comprehensive sanctions seem to have a stronger impact than targeted measures, their adverse effects on civilian populations may contradict any usage predicated on the goal of “civilian protection.” Overall, sanctions are most likely to be effective if they are imposed by international organizations and/or by an ally of the target state, and if they aim to induce modest policy changes as part of a broader political strategy. Targeted sanctions may have a less detrimental impact on civilians, but they require careful calibration as crisis situations evolve. Financial and commodity sanctions appear to be more effective than other forms of targeted sanctions. Advocates for sanctions are increasingly calling for expanding the range of possible targets to include ‘enablers’ of mass atrocities, but the effectiveness of such measures has not been established to date.

Legal Tools: Legal tools to prevent or mitigate mass atrocities include fact-finding missions, immunity or amnesties for perpetrators, indictments or arrest warrants, and international or domestic criminal prosecutions. Our review focuses primarily on the effectiveness of criminal prosecutions and the question of deterrence. At the moment, the evidence base is too limited to say whether or when international criminal proceedings act as deterrents. In several notable cases indictments by international tribunals seem to have had no such effect. While several recent studies suggest that international criminal proceedings can play such a role, it is difficult to isolate the impact of trials (or threat of trials) from the broader range of factors that influence levels of political violence in conflict-affected countries. Deterrence may of course not be the only reason for instituting trials. Increasingly, experts on transitional justice suggest taking a holistic and tailored approach that builds on existing capacities within post-conflict states, and layers different types of justice and accountability mechanisms to reinforce each other. Such an approach may be at odds with a toolbox metaphor: it implies thinking of specific mechanisms as processes within a social and political continuum.

Military Tools: The military tools considered in this review range from cooperative security assistance to regime change campaigns. Across the board, the record of military tools with respect to ending or mitigating mass atrocities is extremely mixed. Military aid seems to be counterproductive in terms of pre-crisis preventative action, as it correlates with an increased risk of conflict. However, at least one study finds that pro-government interventions at an early conflict stage can decrease the risk of mass violence. Arms embargoes, on the other hand, are more likely to provoke modest changes in target state behavior than major reversals of policy. Further, there is some evidence that they make military victory less likely, thereby slightly increasing the likelihood of negotiated settlements. No-fly zones and safe areas have been used in too few contexts to be systematically evaluated. Case study evidence suggests that they are difficult to implement and only work under very specific conditions. Military interventions have a curiously disparate record: several studies find that only the armed confrontation of perpetrator states can reduce mass violence once it has reached the severity of genocide or politicide. Other studies find a remarkably stronger record of civilian protection and peace durability when neutral interveners in the form of UN peacekeepers are deployed. In general, internationalized internal conflicts seem to last longer and have higher overall death tolls than non-internationalized conflicts.

Collectively, the studies also help highlight a central insight: a policy tool will always remain a tool, and will only function as well as the strategy it aims to support, whether through persuasion or coercion.

Full study, discussing the available literature on the policy toolbox is available here.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/22/transforming-masculinities/feed/0A Social Science in Africa Fit for Purposehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/19/a-social-science-in-africa-fit-for-purpose/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/19/a-social-science-in-africa-fit-for-purpose/#commentsFri, 19 Feb 2016 13:25:31 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3242This piece is available in full on Next Generation Social Science, the blog of the SSRC. Below is an excerpt.

In this presentation I will argue that African scholarship on Africa is operating at only a fraction of its true potential, and that it is hampered by the preferences, policies and politics of the western academy.

I will make three major points. First, the state of knowledge about African economics and politics is poor because in the higher reaches of the western academies, the focus is not on generating accurate information, but on inferring causal associations at a high level of abstraction, from datasets. And that those datasets are in fact far too weak for any such conclusions to be drawn.

Second, the structure of academic rewards and careers systematically disadvantages those who either do not have the skills or capacities for this kind of high-end quantitative endeavor (although it is profoundly flawed), or have serious misgivings about it. One result of this is a severe dissonance between actual lived experience, and academic work validated by the academy.

Third is what I call ‘Occidentalism’ in theory and policy. Occidentalism is the variant of Orientalism, it is the tendency to ascribe a cogency to the intellectual and cultural products of the west, that it does not in fact possess. Despite sustained critique by historians and anthropologists, the western experience of state formation remains the standard against which the rest of the world is indexed.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/19/a-social-science-in-africa-fit-for-purpose/feed/3Start Preparing for the Collapse of the Saudi Kingdomhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/17/start-preparing-for-the-collapse-of-the-saudi-kingdom/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/17/start-preparing-for-the-collapse-of-the-saudi-kingdom/#respondWed, 17 Feb 2016 12:16:45 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3239By Sarah Chayes and Alex de Waal, published by Defense One on February 16, 2016.

For half a century, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been the linchpin of U.S. Mideast policy. A guaranteed supply of oil has bought a guaranteed supply of security. Ignoring autocratic practices and the export of Wahhabi extremism, Washington stubbornly dubs its ally “moderate.” So tight is the trust thatU.S. special operators dip into Saudi petrodollars as a counterterrorism slush fund without a second thought. In a sea of chaos, goes the refrain, the kingdom is one state that’s stable.

But is it?

In fact, Saudi Arabia is no state at all. There are two ways to describe it: as a political enterprise with a clever but ultimately unsustainable business model, or so corrupt as to resemble in its functioning a vertically and horizontally integrated criminal organization. Either way, it can’t last. It’s past time U.S.decision-makers began planning for the collapse of the Saudi kingdom.

In recent conversations with military and other government personnel, we were startled at how startled they seemed at this prospect. Here’s the analysis they should be working through.

Understood one way, the Saudi king isCEO of a family business that converts oil into payoffs that buy political loyalty. They take two forms: cash handouts or commercial concessions for the increasingly numerous scions of the royal clan, and a modicum of public goods and employment opportunities for commoners. The coercive “stick” is supplied by brutal internal security services lavishly equipped with American equipment.

The U.S. has long counted on the ruling family having bottomless coffers of cash with which to rent loyalty. Even accounting today’s low oil prices, and as Saudi officials step up arms purchases and military adventures in Yemen and elsewhere, Riyadh is hardly running out of funds.

Still, expanded oil production in the face of such low prices — until the Feb. 16 announcement of a Saudi-Russian freeze at very high January levels — may reflect an urgent need for revenue as well as other strategic imperatives. Talk of a Saudi Aramco IPO similarly suggests a need for hard currency.

A political market, moreover, functions according to demand as well as supply. What if the price of loyalty rises?

It appears that is just what’s happening. King Salman had to spend lavishly to secure the allegiance of the notables who were pledged to the late King Abdullah. Here’s what played out in two other countries when this kind of inflation hit. In South Sudan, an insatiable elite not only diverted the newly minted country’s oil money to private pockets but also kept up their outsized demands when the money ran out, sparking a descent into chaos. The Somali government enjoys generous donor support, but is priced out of a very competitive political market by a host of other buyers — with ideological, security or criminal agendas of their own.

Such comparisons may be offensive to Saudi leaders, but they are telling. If the loyalty price index keeps rising, the monarchy could face political insolvency.

Looked at another way, the Saudi ruling elite is operating something like a sophisticated criminal enterprise, when populations everywhere are making insistent demands for government accountability. With its political and business elites interwoven in a monopolistic network, quantities of unaccountable cash leaving the country for private investments and lavish purchases abroad, and state functions bent to serve these objectives, Saudi Arabia might be compared to such kleptocracies as Viktor Yanukovich’s Ukraine.

Increasingly, Saudi citizens are seeing themselves as just that: citizens, not subjects. In countries as diverse as Nigeria, Ukraine, Brazil, Moldova, and Malaysia, people are contesting criminalized government and impunity for public officials — sometimes violently. In more than half a dozen countries in 2015, populations took to the streets to protest corruption. In three of them, heads of state are either threatened or have had to resign. Elsewhere, the same grievances have contributed to the expansion of jihadi movements or criminal organizations posing as Robin Hoods. Russia and China’s external adventurism can at least partially be explained as an effort to re-channel their publics‘ dissatisfaction with the quality of governance.

For the moment, it is largely Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority that is voicing political demands. But the highly educated Sunni majority, with unprecedented exposure to the outside world, is unlikely to stay satisfied forever with a few favors doled out by geriatric rulers impervious to their input. And then there are the “guest workers.” Saudi officials, like those in other Gulf states, seem to think they can exploit an infinite supply of indigents grateful to work at whatever conditions. But citizens are now heavily outnumbered in their own countries by laborers who may soon begin claiming rights.

For decades, Riyadh has eased pressure by exporting its dissenters — like Osama bin Laden — fomenting extremism across the Muslim world. But that strategy can backfire: bin Laden’s critique of Saudi corruption has been taken up by others and resonates among many Arabs. And King Salman (who is 80, by the way) does not display the dexterity of his half-brother Abdullah. He’s reached for some of the familiar items in the autocrats’ toolbox: executing dissidents, embarking on foreign wars, and whipping up sectarian rivalries to discredit Saudi Shiite demands and boost nationalist fervor. Each of these has grave risks.

There are a few ways things could go, as Salman’s brittle grip on power begins cracking.

One is a factional struggle within the royal family, with the price of allegiance bid up beyond anyone’s ability to pay in cash. Another is foreign war. With Saudi Arabia and Iran already confronting each other by proxy in Yemen and Syria, escalation is too easy. U.S. decision-makers should bear that danger in mind as they keep pressing for regional solutions to regional problems. A third scenario is insurrection—either a non-violent uprising or a jihadi insurgency—a result all too predictable given episodes throughout the region in recent years.

The U.S. keeps getting caught flat-footed when purportedly solid countries came apart. At the very least, and immediately, rigorous planning exercises should be executed, in which different scenarios and different potential U.S. actions to reduce the codependence and mitigate the risks can be tested. Most likely, and most dangerous, outcomes should be identified, and an energetic red team should shoot holes in the automatic-pilot thinking that has guided Washington policy to date.

“Hope is not a policy” is a hackneyed phrase. But choosing not to consider alternatives amounts to the same thing.

This cartoon is part of the 8-part cartoon series by Alex de Waal and Victor Ndula depicting South Sudan’s civil war. The whole series is available here

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/16/south-sudan-spiritual-cataclysm/feed/0South Sudan: The price of ‘peace’https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/15/south-sudan-the-price-of-peace/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/15/south-sudan-the-price-of-peace/#respondMon, 15 Feb 2016 13:24:42 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3221
]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/15/south-sudan-the-price-of-peace/feed/0Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Policy: Implications for Humanitarian Responsehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/12/swedens-feminist-foreign-policy-implications-for-humanitarian-response/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/12/swedens-feminist-foreign-policy-implications-for-humanitarian-response/#respondFri, 12 Feb 2016 13:00:35 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3236This policy brief by Dyan Mazurana, PhD and Daniel Maxwell, PhD presents the implications of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy for the people they strive to assist, Sweden’s own humanitarian policy and operations, and more broadly the whole humanitarian community. It provides recommendations on how a feminist informed humanitarian policy should be implemented to intersect [...]]]>This policy brief by Dyan Mazurana, PhD and Daniel Maxwell, PhD presents the implications of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy for the people they strive to assist, Sweden’s own humanitarian policy and operations, and more broadly the whole humanitarian community. It provides recommendations on how a feminist informed humanitarian policy should be implemented to intersect with other foreign policy areas and broader humanitarian, development and security action at the national and international level.

This cartoon is part of the 8-part cartoon series by Alex de Waal and Victor Ndula depicting South Sudan’s civil war. The whole series is available here.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/06/how-south-sudanese-pay-for-their-leaders-war/feed/0Government versus Rebels?…Soldiers versus Citizenshttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/05/government-versus-rebels-soldiers-versus-citizens/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/05/government-versus-rebels-soldiers-versus-citizens/#respondFri, 05 Feb 2016 11:41:40 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3205The second cartoon of Alex de Waal and Victor Ndula’s series on South Sudan’s war is “Government versus Rebels?…Soldiers versus Citizens.” The full series is available as pdf downloads on our website.

]]>The second cartoon of Alex de Waal and Victor Ndula’s series on South Sudan’s war is “Government versus Rebels?…Soldiers versus Citizens.” The full series is available as pdf downloads on our website.

Public discourse is populated by zombie concepts—a term coined by Ulrich Beck to refer to tropes or claims that continue to live on even after hard evidence and history have long since killed them off, time and again.

One monstrous zombie concept is the claim that climate change will spark new atrocities and conflicts over food scarcity. It’s clear that climate change is a scientific fact. But I am a skeptic about any direct links between environmental crisis, climate change and conflict and famine in the modern world. This skepticism arises partly as a reflex against the poor arguments marshaled in favor of those who predict such crises. Not to mention the trend lines: as the globe has warmed over recent decades, mass atrocities (including both large scale violent killing and famines) have declined.

Timothy Snyder’s Oped in the New York Times, “The Next Genocide”, exemplified the revenge of a dead idea. It invoked the Holocaust out of context—as a professional historian, Snyder surely should have known better! It presented environmental determinist accounts of the mass atrocities in Rwanda and Darfur as facts rather than folktales. It speculated about Chinese land- and resource-grabbing as if China had neo-imperial ambitions.

But, a discussion convened last week by the Stanley Foundation on this topic, made me reflect. The problem is not violence or starvation caused by scarcity, but how narratives of scarcity are deployed to rationalize aggressive policies. In responding to those narratives, political scientists and policy analysts have an important role to play—debunking not resurrecting the Malthusian specter. There is no reason to reconsider the verdict that the causal links between climate change and conflict are unproven, and should they exist, are mediated by a host of political factors. There’s no reason to overlook the basic rule that every mass atrocity is a political decision (and why are political scientists so poor at studying political decisions?).

Malthusianism refuses to accept its proper place as a thoroughly disproven proposition. Refuted by every historical experience—not just food, but energy and minerals too—it is a story that refuses to die. But the un-death of Malthusianism is a political fact. Malthus’s Zombie holds an irrational but tight grip on our imaginations. Snyder’s Oped is just one example. There are plenty more: let me give just one example, prominent in the British media.

The renowned environmentalist Sir David Attenborough produced a TV program on human ecology two years ago, arguing that population control was a “huge area of concern”, and that the world was “heading for disaster unless we do something”.

“What are all these famines in Ethiopia?” he continued. The answer is, there are no longer famines in Ethiopia. The current drought—related to El Niño and exceptionally severe—is cutting several points of the country’s economic growth and has resulted in food scarcity and hunger, but not mass dying as in famines past. Thirty years ago a less widespread drought contributed to a famine that killed at least 600,000 people. The population has more than doubled in the meantime, but famines—in the sense of events that kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people—have disappeared from the country. Why? Because famine, like atrocity, is a political act.

The link between scarcity and atrocity passes through the minds and mouths of populist politicians. It’s political decisions that make something wholly insubstantial into something real.

Snyder might have chosen to make this point: Adolf Hitler’s unfounded fear of scarcity contributed to his hunger for lebensraum, and we should worry that similar irrational narratives may recur.

My simple recommendation to the advocacy and public information organizations who work on this is therefore, it’s our duty as political scientists and responsible citizens to challenge every public statement by a political leader or commentator who claims that resource scarcity threatens famine or atrocity. We may not be able to destroy Malthus’s Zombie—after all it is dead already—but at least let us immobilize this ghoul every time it makes an entrance, and stop it eating our brains.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/03/malthuss-zombie-why-are-we-still-scared-by-stories-about-scarcity-causing-atrocities/feed/1Two Definitions of Kleptocracy – and How ‘The Sentry’ Might be Usefulhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/01/two-definitions-of-kleptocracy-and-how-the-sentry-might-be-useful/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/01/two-definitions-of-kleptocracy-and-how-the-sentry-might-be-useful/#respondMon, 01 Feb 2016 11:59:37 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3194In this posting I will explore how my framework of the ‘political marketplace’ differs from the Sentry’s ‘violent kleptocracies’ and why, in my view, the Sentry’s approach is deficient.

The Enough Project recently started a new initiative, based on the observation that its countries of focus are all marked by a systemic combination of violence and kleptocracy. In other words, Enough argues that not only are these countries run by war criminals, but by regular criminals too—thieves. With the recent growing interest in corruption and illicit financial flows, the U.S. government is sharpening its tools for pursuing these criminals and their ill-gotten gains. Enter the Sentry, described as an effort to “dismantle the financing of Africa’s deadliest conflicts.”

This had the hallmarks of Enough’s favored approach: find an instrument of U.S. power, which the administration is keen to use, identify how it can be utilized more coercively and intrusively in the countries of concern to Enough, and then define those countries’ problems around this tool.

It is also underpinned by another time-honored moralistic script: bad things happen because bad men are in power, so let’s get rid of the bad men. Enough’s old version was that Sudan’s leaders were war criminals because they were evil. Now it’s (also) because they are greedy.

The Sentry’s toolkit is useful for identifying kleptocrats and how and where they have hidden their funds. It is obviously therefore relevant to the political marketplace, insofar as one element of political funding can be criminal circuits, some of the tools used by political business managers include round-tripping money through secrecy jurisdictions (tax havens), and many politicians also illicitly build up personal fortunes. But the similarities with a political market analysis are superficial.

One of my discussants was Brad Brooks-Rubin from the Sentry. His commentary used the vocabulary of the political marketplace, but in a way that reflected the Sentry’s different analytical framework, of “hijacked states.” To quote the Sentry’s mission statement:

Countries such as Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo are often referred to as failed states, but in reality, they should be considered hijacked states. Political, military, and commercial elites in these countries – often collaborating with neighbors – control and run the state and its institutions, use their power to transfer a large fraction of society’s resources to enrich themselves, and use brute force to remain in power. In these states, high-level corruption linked to violence is not anomalous; it constitutes the actual system of governance.

My analysis is different: systemic corruption and violence are both products of a poorly-regulated rentier political market.

Brad’s commentary, and reading the Sentry’s problem statement, sharpened my own thinking about the differences between our analyses, and also how the Sentry project could in fact be useful—provided it is placed in an analysis of the larger context: systemic corruption and violence are both products of a poorly-regulated rentier political market.

First of all, the Sentry is dealing only with the criminal element of political business: not political markets as such, which are a much bigger and more structural phenomenon. Most political financing is lawful: it is from oil rents, security cooperation, political gifts, and commercial enterprises run by political or security organizations. The criminal element is just a subset.

Economic criminals are driven by greed alone, and use political office solely for self-enrichment. Political entrepreneurs pursue political aims, within a system that forces them to compete in a political market, or fail. Their ‘profit’ is their political budget, which is (mostly) reinvested in their political project, mostly patronage payoffs.

As Stanislav Andreski observed fifty years ago, a kleptocratic system of governance should not be seen as the rule of thieves, but more broadly as the application of the mechanisms of supply and demand to the functioning of organs of public authority.

Second, the project needs to take account of the extensive experience of sanctions (smart and dumb), which show that they rarely work. They haven’t removed Pres. Omar al Bashir or Pres. Robert Mugabe, let alone reformed their political economies. In fact they have compelled those leaders to dive more deeply into the shadows of illicit finance.

It follows that we shouldn’t equate tackling criminality with regulating or reforming a political market—nor with dismantling a war economy (a different thing again). If we succeeded in removing the criminals in government, we wouldn’t be left with a functional state. We would be left with a thoroughly deregulated political market. Think of what happened in Libya after the removal of Gaddafi, or how the Central American drug trade mutated—and became more violent—after the killing or arrest of the kingpins of the cartels.

Third, Enough’s measures smack of (yet another) exercise in the U.S. exercising dominion over other countries’ affairs, in this case using American hegemony over the global financial system, to get its way. This may seem smart and liberal for those whose worldview is resolutely Washington-centric: for the rest of the world it looks very different.

In short, as advertised, the Sentry is likely to be another misguided enterprise, rather like the conflict minerals campaign.

So how might the Sentry be useful? Let me suggest a formula that addresses these problems.

Begin with recognizing that all political systems need money, and that political finance should be regulated. This in turn requires drawing a distinction between political spending and corruption. This is a simple distinction to assert but a remarkably difficult one to delineate in practice.

The difference between legitimate funding of political institutions and patronage systems, and theft, needs to be drawn differently for each political system. So the next step is to initiate a process that allows countries to draw this line themselves. In institutionalized political systems, there can be an open debate on political financing, leading to legislation and enforcement. In political markets, it is the political financiers—the domestic businesses, foreign investors and patrons who provide the political money—who must take the lead. Let them collectively determine what counts as corruption and what is legitimate political spending.

Once this line is drawn (and of course it may need to be redrawn time and again), international financial instruments can come into play. Those whose activities fall on the ‘corrupt’ side of the line could be targeted, with the cooperation and support of the political-financial establishment of the country. Those activities on the legitimate side should be allowed to proceed.

Naturally, when political financiers get together, their collective commercial interests will emerge. Almost always, those interests favor peace, stability and the rule of law. If they demand these political outcomes, they are better-placed than anybody else, to get them. This is why a voluntary and self-regulating code of conduct for political financing is workable—it is in their interests. The best example is Somaliland. This is not neither a foolproof proposal, nor one that will work everywhere (almost nothing will work in South Sudan, and very little in a wholly rentier governance system), and nor is it a detailed proposal. But it is a logical place to start.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/02/01/two-definitions-of-kleptocracy-and-how-the-sentry-might-be-useful/feed/0A provocation on Burundihttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/01/30/a-provocation-on-burundi/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/01/30/a-provocation-on-burundi/#commentsSat, 30 Jan 2016 14:14:24 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3192While I am not an expert on Burundi, I, like many others right now, am watching with dismay as violence in the country continues. My recent research has been on atrocity endings and Burundi today echoes with one finding from my work: the difference between halting (or in this case forestalling) mass atrocities and advancing [...]]]>While I am not an expert on Burundi, I, like many others right now, am watching with dismay as violence in the country continues. My recent research has been on atrocity endings and Burundi today echoes with one finding from my work: the difference between halting (or in this case forestalling) mass atrocities and advancing democratization. These two valuable endeavors, history informs us, are not the same. While clearly strongly institutionalized democracies are the best system for protecting civilians from mass violence inflicted by their own government, the timeline, processes and priorities of mass violence and institutionalizing democracy are not the same, and in some cases, they can work at odds with each other.

From the vantage point of comparative study of atrocity endings, the most potent factor is to stabilize the political situation, removing as many uncertainties as are possible, while increasing pressure to protect civilians from violence. The task: clarify the political issues and forge international (especially regional) consensus, while increasing pressure and specificity of demands regarding the patterns of violence, and adding resources to support the actual work of protection, be it international monitors, police or military units.

So how might this apply to Burundi? Stabilizing and clarifying the political situation is not the same as expanding the arena for democratization, which often includes more uncertainties, ambiguities and diverse voices. Efforts to deepen democratic practice and atrocity prevention part ways at some along the continuum when violence is underway. If stabilization and ending political uncertainty are the critical ingredients for atrocity prevention when violence is on-going and seems likely to escalate, as many believe is the case in Burundi, then fully recognizing the electoral triumph of Pres. Nkurunziza is necessary. Calm his fears that international efforts in the name of protection are not actually regime change efforts. Such an approach may be unsavory, but it is not illegitimate. Here is why:

It is my understanding that the President’s party, the CNDD, would have won the presidential election with whichever candidate they put forward. In short, they had the votes.

While the maneuvering that Nkurunziza engaged in to find a legal loophole allowing him to seek a third term would not likely hold up under any neutral scrutiny of the key documents (the Arusha Acccords and the constitution), he did maneuver through the existing foundational documents and institutions. The constitutional court, which reviewed his third term arguments, was undoubtedly biased as the judges are presidential appointees, but that is not a situation he created, that is the structure of Burundi’s system. He did win an election, yes, a deeply flawed election, but one where some opposition members did manage to win or hold their seats as well. As a colleague pointed out to me, in Senegal, the president attempted a similar move by seeking an arguably illegal additional term, but he did not have the votes, so ran and lost the election. Burundi’s opposition could not achieve this.

The political opposition, in short, did not have the votes. This does not mean they deserve to be politically excommunicated—or brutalized as has happened with some–but it does mean their efforts to shift the conversation about legitimacy to extra-systemic political and military action is at least as illegitimate as the President’s third term, if not more. They have abandoned the pretense of following the rules, whereas he warped the existing rules.

Outside pressure and threats of military intervention to overturn even controversial and flawed elections, when the opposition did not have the votes to win in any case, is a deeply problematic position. Yet this is the undercurrent of U.S., other western states’ and the AU’s approach to Burundi. In the name of genocide prevention, “not another Rwanda,” the glimmer of intervention and remaining ambiguity in international positions on the elections is arguably likely to increase and prolong the period of violence.

One option that errs on the side of atrocities prevention would be to recognize the results of the elections as they stand. This need not by any means translate into carte blanche for Nkurunziza. His comments that seemed to signal willingness to abandon the historical accommodation enshrined in the Arusha Accords should be countered with resolute opposition by the international community. It is time, the message should be, to return to and re-validate the institutions established as the foundation of Burundi’s post-conflict dispensation as the very ones to pave the way for Burundi’s political future. In other words, it is time for everyone, internationals and the opposition included, to return to politics without relying on trump cards.

Further, ethnic polarization in public discourse should be unequivocally denounced. More than denouncing the inflammatory speech, Burundi’s political leaders should be responsible for issuing statements that intentionally calm violence. Any efforts to stabilize the political situation should be accompanied by fervent pressure that the leaders who benefit act like real leaders.

Would such a program help correct the distortion of democratic institutions initiated by the President’s bid for a third term? No, I do not think it does. This harm has been done, but it is unclear to me how it could be undone by caveat at this point without considerably more violence than what we’ve already seen.

Deepening democratic processes is not a crisis-driven endeavor. Democracy is nothing if not systemic—a set of practices that get worn into the regular course of political contention, channeled through institutions established for this purpose rather than routed around them. It is a language of engaged and accountable reform; it lacks drama and requires consensus and community building over the longer haul. For people outside a country who wish to support the growth of democracy, the greatest contribution is slow steady application of principles that return contention to debate and nonviolent organizing.

We do not see such an approach at present regarding presidential term limits in Africa from the AU or the wider international community, which has responded to various efforts to alter constitutions as if each case could be entirely isolated from every other case. Absent systemic and predictable responses, and given the very real and apparently escalating threat of widespread violence in Burundi, an atrocities prevention approach that errs on the side of stability would be more realizable than one predicated on ‘fixing’ democracy through crisis intervention.

There are three overlapping general frameworks for human security (MacFarlane and Khong 2006). The first (‘Canadian’) focuses primarily on protection from organized violence; the second (‘Japanese’) on protecting and promoting a broad range of human capabilities; [...]]]>

This essay briefly examines the possible components of a ‘human security approach’ to African peace missions and security sector governance/reform.

There are three overlapping general frameworks for human security (MacFarlane and Khong 2006). The first (‘Canadian’) focuses primarily on protection from organized violence; the second (‘Japanese’) on protecting and promoting a broad range of human capabilities; and the third (‘European’) is an amalgam of the two.

The ‘Canadian’ approach is a shift from paradigms of security focused overwhelmingly on sovereign states, to those focused on individuals. It has been associated with the doctrine of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ (Rothchild and Deng 1996) and the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS 2001) which coined and promoted the norm of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P). Analytical work has focused on the human cost of war and the plight of individuals caught up in political violence and armed conflict (Human Security Report 2005; 2013), while policy work has revolved around: (a) the international diplomatic, financial and military instruments for deterring and punishing violence against civilians, and mandating armed interventions; and (b) the responsibilities of peacekeeping missions to protect civilians in their areas of operation.

The ‘Japanese’ approach, is associated with the broadening of economic development to take account of a broad spectrum of human wellbeing issues, including especially resilience in the face of shocks and stresses (UNDP 1994; Sen 1999; Alkire 2005). This approach also focuses upon human empowerment. In the Report of the Human Security Commission (2003), Sadaka Ogata and Amartya Sen articulate a distinctive view of human security, in which ‘[a]chieving human security includes not just protecting people but also empowering people to fend for themselves.’ (p. 4). In a notable divergence from the immediately prior report of the ICISS, the Human Security Commission emphasized how human security complements state security, and how empowerment is a complement to protection:

People’s ability to act on their own behalf—and on behalf of others—is the second key to human security. Fostering that ability differentiates human security from state security, from humanitarian work and even from much development work. Empowerment is important because people develop their potential as individuals and as communities. Strengthening peoples’ abilities to act on their own behalf is also instrumental to human security.

Ogata and Sen do not explicitly apply this insight to the security sector, but it would be logical to extend it in this direction. This would imply that ‘R2P’ should be complemented by, or subsumed within, a principle of supporting the security empowerment of communities.

The ‘European’ approach to human security has combined elements of both traditions, with a particular focus on how to operationalize a human security approach in the context of a possible doctrine for armed interventions by the European Union (Barcelona Group 2004). This is most comprehensively articulated by Mary Kaldor (2007) to include the following elements: (a) promoting human rights; (b) advancing economic development in the broad sense of enhancing all aspects of well-being; (c) seeking peace and security; (d) promoting legitimate political authority and good governance; and (e) adherence to multilateral principles with a regional focus. The operational character of this approach makes it a useful starting point for a human security paradigm for African peace missions.

All of the three approaches escape from the trap of making the state the exclusive referent for security, but all retain the state as the primary provider of human security, except for those exceptional circumstances in which it can be overruled by an international intervention.

A major difficulty with this arises from the empirical-historical reality that states are no longer the exclusive providers of security in many parts of the world, and in fact that international peace operations are no longer time-limited interventions that can either restore the status quo, or create a capable and democratic state as a fully-accredited member of the international community, in short order (HIPPO 2015). Rather, peace operations are becoming missions without end, an international layer of security governance that continues indefinitely (de Waal 2015). Additionally, ‘non-state actors’ have become integral and indefinite features of the security landscape.

In response to this, the concept of ‘public authority’ should be introduced into the human security framework, to represent the multiple potential providers of security, from the local to the international. This begins with a simple recognition of empirical realities. It leads to a normative project, of developing mechanisms for ensuring that the various levels and mechanisms for security provision are handled. This entails a shift from the (top-down) ‘responsibility to protect’ to a (bottom up) approach founded on community empowerment over the local security agenda.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/01/21/human-security-and-african-peace-missions/feed/0Round-up: debates on knowledge production in fragile stateshttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/01/07/round-up-debates-on-knowledge-production-in-fragile-states/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/01/07/round-up-debates-on-knowledge-production-in-fragile-states/#respondThu, 07 Jan 2016 15:14:59 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3183If you missed the round-table discussion on Humanity Journal’s blog discussion on the changing nature of knowledge production in fragile states, below is an overview with key quotes from the essays and links to each author’s contribution. The series began with an essay from Rebecca Tapscott and Daval Desai, previously highlighted on this blog. Below are [...]]]>If you missed the round-table discussion on Humanity Journal’s blog discussion on the changing nature of knowledge production in fragile states, below is an overview with key quotes from the essays and links to each author’s contribution. The series began with an essay from Rebecca Tapscott and Daval Desai, previously highlighted on this blog. Below are the responses to it.

“The fact that we are talking about “evidence,” rather than research, is itself telling and underscores a shift in the development industry in the last ten years. Speaking about ‘evidence’ rather than about “research” suggests something much more concrete and indisputable. Evidence is taken as proof. But surely research is also debate.”

“…a limited pool of experts that shape world: “this is related to the narrow pools of thematic experts that donors often draw on. Problematically, these ‘pools’ are often self-referential and self-contained with relatively monolithic forms of knowledge emerging, limiting genuine debate.”

“Policy makers are ultimately interested in evidence that is generalizable enough to be widely applicable – that is what will help them program better. While context specificity is recognized as important, more important is knowing “what works.” “What works” is then adapted to what we know about the context. The problem is that this treats evidence as acontextual.”

“My nomination for development’s ‘Most Insightful, Least Cited’ paper is Ariel Heryanto’s “The development of ‘development.’” Originally written in Indonesian in the mid-1980s, Heryanto’s gem been cited a mere 79 times (according to Google Scholar), even in its carefully-translated English incarnation. For me, this paper is so wonderful because it makes, in clear and clever ways, two key points that bear endless repetition, especially to today’s junior scholars. The first point is that inference from evidence is never self-evident: significance must always be interpreted through theory […] Heryanto’s second key point is that we are all captives of language, of the limits of any given tongue to convey the subtleties of complex issues.”

“The first point of departure for those self-consciously seeking to reconcile them is being explicit with one’s funders, supervisors, subjects, and audiences, and ultimately with oneself, about the serious challenges (and, if necessary, trade-offs) involved in making methodologically sound and ethically informed decisions. The second, perhaps, is seeking to change the central tone and terms of debate in applied development research, and seeking less to influence an abstraction called “policy” – which is (and should be) largely determined by domestic political processes – and more to helping those charged with implementing it in those communities that surely need it most.”

“Yemi Kale at the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics told me in an interview in 2015 that donors provide about 70 percent of his budget. And the provenance of this money is not always clear and transparent. Most development agencies cannot cover recurring expenditure or regular salaries. The funds thus go to cover ad hoc projects; new surveys; per diems and associated costs; and, if channelled by a clever director of statistics, occasionally new capital investments in cars and computers. This creates an awkward set of principal-agent dynamics for NSOs. In effect NSOs are often survey agencies for donor hire (frequently through arcane and opaque funding sources) rather than more—or less—independent actors in, and providers of facts for, the domestic political system.”

“Interventions that use information instrumentally to evaluate success or failure are likely to backfire in a system where the knowledge production system is part of its own complex political economy.”

“Local demand for data needs to come into focus. A statistical office is only sustainable if it serves local needs for information. The development community needs to remember that demanding evidence for policy means investing in accountability of the evidence-makers. Obtaining data is not a technocratic exercise but rather one of building institutions.”

“…we should be deeply wary of rejoicing in a thicket of numbers rather than despairing at the sparseness of the data points we had before. Patrick Ball provides salutary caution about using crowd-sourced data for social phenomena in difficult places: the increase in the number of data points may just magnify the biases of data collection, with the outcome of amplifying error rather than correcting it (Ball 2015).”

“The process of ‘policy-based evidence making’ consists, I suggest, of senior decision makers formulating policy based on their own intellectual capital (acquired years or decades earlier), their experience of decision-making under stress and uncertainty, and their reflections on the dilemmas faced by others in similar circumstances. Perhaps a newspaper or magazine article may also prompt their thinking about a broader issue such as global health or climate change. Their junior aides then dress these policies up with a semblance of rigor by seeking out the abstracts of academic papers that appear to support their approach.”

“The way out of this thicket, I suggest, begins with the challenge of making research accessible to those who are its subjects, and who are supposed to benefit.”

“… most people I interact with in the course of research are less obsessed with “what development agencies might want to hear” than the “supply chain” framework seems to imagine. They may indeed consider such things in brief encounters with international researchers (particularly those who ask questions pertaining to their material needs), but over the course of longterm relationships such a sustained concern with international policy is unlikely to be at the forefront of people’s minds. Moreover, most have seen international researchers come and go with little if any tangible impacts seen on the ground. What seems much more likely (if there is a cost and benefit analysis) is that they shape a narrative to create the relationship they want with the researcher sitting opposite them.”

“It is a fantasy that a ‘pure’ product exists if we spend enough time to get it. I value long-term engagement—but in the course of such engagement the researcher enters and alters the story. Authenticity of a life story is always necessarily changed by the researcher who becomes part of that story. Knowledge, in this case cannot be an ‘alienable commodity.’”

“Today, researchers and their ‘subjects’ have a concrete understanding of what research is as well as how it should be done. We propose that we should take this as our starting point—and in doing so, recognize the implications it has for ethics, method, and politics. It is not enough to wish them away or to try to account for them. We must recognize research as an institution and treat it as such, rigorously accounting for how the practice of research structures the information we produce. And we can only do so by recognizing how research has changed, and reimagining how we might allocate responsibility for its effects.”

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2016/01/07/round-up-debates-on-knowledge-production-in-fragile-states/feed/0The challenges and potential of a social science archivehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/29/the-challenges-and-potential-of-a-social-science-archive/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/29/the-challenges-and-potential-of-a-social-science-archive/#respondTue, 29 Dec 2015 11:00:13 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3176This blog series is based on research conducted by Drs. Bridget Conley-Zilkic and Dyan Mazurana.

While there is much to be learned from existing models for archives, we note that the peace and security research community does not yet have a flagship repository for sharing the research datasets it produces from field research on issues related to conflict and mass atrocities. The construction of a flagship peace and security research data archives would help advance the research and practice communities’ understanding of post-conflict societies, mass atrocities, and genocide by enabling researchers to share and reuse datasets.

Such an archive would help enable multiple researchers, practitioners, and students to:

Analyze datasets;

Conduct research across multiple datasets;

Interrogate research data in new and creative ways with the development of tools that can interact with the research data;

Compare and discuss research methods and ethical practices;

Identify research gaps and opportunities and develop new research questions by exploring a richer, more complete, and more readily available corpus of existing datasets;

Engage in questions about the range of factors that shape the creation of these datasets and the documentation of post-conflict societies and mass atrocities.

We recognize that one important reason why such an archive does not exist are the challenges entailed in creating one. Among them are anonymity, ethics, contextualization and operationalization. Some specific outstanding concerns are:

Data on populations in situations of armed conflict is highly sensitive, thus serious consideration will have to be given to how the sharing of even coded, de-identified data may create risks for research participants;

Researchers may be reluctant or unable to share their primary data, because an original funder of a project owns the data; concern about the potential security risks posed to research participants; or concerns about intellectual property rights;

Institutional Review Boards (IRB) and other regulatory bodies may have concerns about the types and forms of data shared;

The collection of data may not have been done in a way that anticipated access beyond the research team that collected it and therefore may not be available in a format that is suited to this purpose;

A system of access and permissions would need to be devised that addresses the needs of various audiences (students, fellow researchers, etc.) while also protecting the data contained within the repository;

How data points are presented in relation to the larger context and narrative of the original collection; individual interviews would need some context to make sense to researchers and possibly should remain embedded within the framework of the larger project;

The creation of the archive in itself would not deter researchers from designing new, prospective research on already addressed questions involving conflict-affected populations; as a result, strategies will be required to promote use of the archive and motivate fellow researchers to use existing data, where possible, rather than continuing to interview vulnerable populations on sensitive topics.

Even in discussing these challenges with fellow researchers, we found an overall positive response to the idea of creating an archive. We also note that several researchers highlighted the potential to incorporate the archive into their approach to data collection going forward. Should such an archive be created, there may be unique opportunities for researchers to integrate the prospective archive into their research design from the outset, and to be supported by archive staff in doing so.

Why a university-based archive?

The development of a university-based peace and security archives could serve as a vital teaching and research resource for students and faculty. It would provide researchers directly involved in peace and security research with a trusted repository to deposit their valuable and hard-earned research data and could serve as a resource for research and teaching. Further, it could serve as a foundational component of a center, program, area of study, or initiative focused on peace and security, serving as the basis for a variety of symposiums, workshops, and collaborative research projects. In particular, the development of tools that allows researchers and students to interact with research data from the archives in creative ways to formulate new findings, insights, and questions can serve as an exciting nexus between archives, research data, and scholarship.

Such an initiative or center would foster the notion of a data to scholarship continuum that can inform and innovate teaching and research across a higher education institution. This concept can make the process of data creation and scholarship an explicit object of learning and inquiry, making data creation and curation visible as a vital part of scholarship. It would:

Provide students with the opportunity to learn about methods for creating research data that can richly and creatively contribute to scholarship;

Provide students with the opportunity to learn about creating and managing research data ethically;

Enable faculty and students the opportunity to develop tools and techniques for interrogating data, a process that can be seen as scholarship in its own right;

Maximize the value of research data by supporting reuse;

Facilitate connections across disciplines and over time, helping to foster the intellectual community.

We recognize that the challenges of creating and funding such an archive are not negligible. Nonetheless, the value of such an archive to research and education suggests that it would be would well worth the effort.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/29/the-challenges-and-potential-of-a-social-science-archive/feed/0Models for archiveshttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/22/models-for-archives/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/22/models-for-archives/#respondTue, 22 Dec 2015 12:35:56 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3173This blog essay is based on research by Lauren Kitz in support of project exploring the viability of a social science archive conducted by Drs. Bridget Conley-Zilkic and Dyan Mazurana.

The absence of an archive to capture primary source data on conflict does not mean that there are no models to inform such an endeavor. In this essay, we introduce several models of archives related to human security issues and discuss some of the challenges that would be involved to create an archive for social science data.

Traditional archival practice consists of collecting, storing, and making accessible material whose long-term preservation has been deemed critical due to its intrinsic cultural, historical or evidentiary value. In the human rights or human security context, archives are seen to play additional key roles in supporting advocacy activities and transitional justice processes, shaping historical memory, guarding against impunity, and preventing recurrence of future abuses. Drawing on research by Lauren Kitz, this project documented three major models, primarily but not exclusively drawing on U.S.-based institutions: traditional research archives; audiovisual archives; and mapping, new media and multimedia archives.

The HRDI is an extensive archive of human rights advocacy and research materials in both physical and digital format. It has three components: The HRDI hosts digital materials for other initiatives which are archives in their own right, including the Texas After Violence Project, the Genocide Archive of Rwanda, the Guatemalan National Police Historical Archive, El Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen, and the WITNESS Media Archive. It also holds a collection of archived web resources from nearly 200 smaller organizations that lack the resources to archive their own work. Finally, the UT Collection is comprised of the personal collections of close to 100 individuals and initiatives in traditional archive format, which include documents, photographs, audio and video recordings and ephemera.

A type of traditional archive that is closely related to our concern with places in conflict is the records of truth and reconciliation commissions as well as legal tribunals. As would be expected, however, both of these types of repositories are very specific to the context, formats and purposes for which they were created. Nonetheless, their archiving standards are also extremely varied. For instance, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is fairly well-documented on a government run website, as is the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whereas the slightly older UN-sponsored Guatemalan Historical Clarification Commission has no dedicated archive.

Products from social science research A number of online or physical archives of the end products from social science research do exist. Within this category, we include online and physical libraries, as can be found through various UN agencies, human rights organizations and in the publications of university-based researchers. Further, there are an increasing number of interactive digital projects that serve as vehicles for accessing and displaying primary data. Crisis mapping, for instance, is one way to present raw data in a disaggregated form while still creating a coherent picture of the overall situation. Another example is The Land Matrix, a global and independent land monitoring initiative that promotes transparency and accountability in decisions over land and investment, which enables access to primary source data about land deals. Some examples of this model may call themselves archives but more closely identify their mandate as investigative journalism or social justice media.

Across these various models, different institutions also articulate a range of aims. Some archives with human rights materials have an explicit social justice mission, others conceive of themselves merely as historical repositories (such as the 780 Commission Archive), whereas “Open Secrets” and “Witness to Guantanamo,” for example, collect testimony with the goal of influencing legislation on current political issues. The oral history project, “Voices of Rwanda” has an equally important but less immediately political goal of raising international genocide awareness. However, as we noted earlier, we have not yet found any examples of archives which express the aim of contributing to reflection on and education about methods of social science research, per se, in addition to goals related to the specific themes of the actual data collected.

Social Science Research Archives The largest gap in human rights archival practice is in social science research archives, which are defined as interactive archives that provide access to primary datasets, allowing the user/researcher to manipulate data in relation to their own research questions. While as of now, no such archive exists for primary sources data, there are several models of archives or collections that enable access to secondary source data collected from media, government or other (often human rights) reports.

One example of this latter category is the newly launched “Gedelt Project,” which provides daily updated global media datasets on over 300 different search terms. In 2014, the group also launched the GDELT Human Rights Global Knowledge Graph, which augments the group’s focus on news media to include an additional 110,552 documents from Amnesty International, FIDH, Human Rights Watch, International Criminal Court, International Crisis Group, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the United States Department of State. They make available coded metadata from these reports on a range of human rights issues. However, this data collection has been reported by some researchers to have not yet balanced quantity with the quality and accuracy required for strong research data.

Comparable datasets include the CIA generated Political Instability Task Force and its Atrocities Watch list, ACLED, KOSVED, the Social, Political, and Economic Event Database, the Polity database, and so forth. Further models can be found in the collection of highly respected datasets produced by researchers and teams of researchers associated with PRIO or SIPRI, none of which are produced from data that is generated in the field, but rather through analysis of media and other reports. Likewise, many individual researchers similarly rely on secondary sources to construct datasets. The shortcomings of relying on media or other sources have been noted by many researchers, who argue that the research produced by these sources measures attention paid to phenomenon rather than phenomenon itself—reinforcing the value of rigorous primary source studies.

While there is much to be learned from each of the models illustrated above, we note that the peace and security research community does not yet have a flagship repository for sharing the research datasets it produces from field research on issues related to conflict and mass atrocities.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/22/models-for-archives/feed/0Why social science researchers need a university-based archivehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/17/why-social-science-researchers-need-a-unviersity-based-archive/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/17/why-social-science-researchers-need-a-unviersity-based-archive/#respondThu, 17 Dec 2015 16:00:11 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3171This blog series is based on research conducted by Drs. Bridget Conley-Zilkic and Dyan Mazurana.

The “evidence-based” turn in social science research about conflict has fundamentally changed knowledge production and dissemination: fields predicated on theorization, case studies and anecdotal materials have shifted towards production of primary source information in the form of assessments, surveys, and large-scale individual and group interview projects providing a landscape of data with which to draw conclusions, inform insights, and ideally improve outcomes. The results to date from this approach offer impressive new insights into the patterns of violence, civilian vulnerabilities, and improving responses.

The shift was led in many ways by international organizations and state-based entities that work in or are concerned with conflicts and sought to better describe, convey and provide services to people impacted by violent social disruptions. As is evidenced in our review of primary source data collections in four thematic areas related to conflict—gender-based violence, child soldiers, pastoralists and perpetrators—far more evidence-based research exists in areas where a large organization (governments or intergovernmental such as the United Nations) has sponsored research. However, a consequence of this organizational leadership on evidence based social science research on conflict was an emphasis on methodology rather than epistemology: in short, discourse on the multiple ways of constructing surveys, interviews and assessments flourished, while reflection on the core data at the heart of this knowledge production stagnated. Such reflection was not the primary purpose for the organizations that sponsored the research efforts.

One result of this evolution of research practices is that the actual raw data collected has in many cases been treated as a secret ingredient on the way towards the final product: the published report that synthesizes and highlights key take-aways. While this is an understandable development, the interviews and transcripts that are the source of coded data—and which potentially offer a wealth of additional insights—are thereby restricted to a severely limited audience, often only the principal investigator. Consequences include: the isolation of studies from each other because of core data incompatibilities; researchers often returning to the same populations to ask very similar questions, at worst, exposing them to new trauma, but also often gathering evidence from the same subset of the total affected population; and missed opportunities to reflect on the process of evidence gathering, which is necessary for fields concerned with conflict to continue to deepen their intellectual and practical applications.

One crucial contributing factor to the lack of reflection on practices of knowledge production is the complete absence of institutional models for archiving raw data collected by social science research, particularly transcribed interview data. In short, currently, there are no archives for primary source data collections on issues related to conflict, a fact that inhibits the field’s ability for self-reflection, training new generations of researchers, and for comparing results across studies. Arguably, only universities have the requisite concern about how knowledge is produced in addition to what knowledge is produced to provide an appropriate home for such an archive.

The field is ripe for a university to assume a leadership role by establishing an archive that helps to cultivate practices, reflection, training and access to the raw data of social science research on conflict.

In two blog essays to follow, we address what different models for human rights archives already exist and what the challenges and benefits would be for a university that might consider hosting such an endeavor.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/17/why-social-science-researchers-need-a-unviersity-based-archive/feed/0Remembering the Ones We Lost: South Sudanhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/15/remembering-the-ones-we-lost-south-sudan/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/15/remembering-the-ones-we-lost-south-sudan/#commentsTue, 15 Dec 2015 13:13:13 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3169Today is the official launch date for a website that serves both to document and display the results of efforts to name the ones who have been killed in South Sudan’s conflicts since 1955. WPF is proud to have supported the South Sudanese civil society volunteers who have spearheaded this project. The people of [...]]]>Today is the official launch date for a website that serves both to document and display the results of efforts to name the ones who have been killed in South Sudan’s conflicts since 1955. WPF is proud to have supported the South Sudanese civil society volunteers who have spearheaded this project. The people of South Sudan have endured conflict for decades–the death tolls have unquestionably been enormous, but they are also broad estimates. No one before this group of South Sudanese attempted to capture the names of those killed. As they announce on their website:

They were fathers, brothers, mothers, sisters and children. Each of them cherished by their families and communities. They are the people killed or missing in the conflicts that have ravaged South Sudan since August 1955.

This project is designed for one purpose: to honor the memory of each person who has died or gone missing during conflict in South Sudan. You can participate by submitting the name of someone who is lost or by offering a memorial tribute.

Remembering The Ones We Lost is a public memorial that aims to name all victims of conflict and armed violence in South Sudan. This unified and public recognition of individual lives being lost through violence is accomplished through the collective efforts of individuals, communities and institutions to name victims. This initiative hopes to bring attention to the shared suffering, give additional meaning to cries for peace and be a tool for understanding and reconciliation amongst South Sudanese individuals and communities. As such, the website allows individuals and communities to provide the names of people killed in armed conflicts through filling of the testimonial form, email, SMS and twitter.

Memorialization is a process through which society acknowledges violent and painful pasts and transforms them into tools for understanding both historical and contemporary injustices. Public memorials come in many forms, from museums and monuments to the collections of condolence notes, flowers, and pictures of victims at sites where they died or disappeared.

Memorialization has both private and reflective objectives and public and educational ones. On the one hand, the acknowledgment of painful legacies and past can be seen as a form of ‘symbolic reparations’ that helps survivors in their process of healing. At the same time, memorials can help societies to build a collective narrative of the past and prevent recurrences.

Remembering individuals who were lost to a conflict can be a powerful form of memorialization that brings attention to the circumstances of a person’s death or disappearance. In describing the symbolic power of publicly naming victims killed during the Syrian conflict, Lina Sergie Attar, a Syrian-American architect and writer, wrote:

“When you call someone by their name, something materializes that transcends the ephemeral utterance. The concrete syllables of one’s name represents everything that person is or was supposed to be. As we read 100,000 names, our dead gain the weight of recognition that they deserve but were never granted. Name after name, hour after hour, days through the nights, from reciting with a microphone in front of a bustling street audience to whispers alone in the dark surrounded by a slumbering world: we render each name visible and heard for a moment in time before it disappears once more.”

Vigils in which names were read out aloud have been held in Juba, South Sudan and Nairobi, Kenya in December 2014. The organizers of the project plan to continue with such memorialization initiatives, including reading of names over the radio and publishing them in newspapers.

Organizers

Remembering The Ones We Lost was initiated by a small group of dedicated South Sudanese volunteers and organizations: Anyieth D’Awol (The ROOTS Project), Awak Bior, Christina Obur, Daud Gideon, David Deng (South Sudan Law Society (SSLS)), Edmund Yakani (Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO)), Priscilla Nyagoah, Pio Ben Ding and Yohanis Riek.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/15/remembering-the-ones-we-lost-south-sudan/feed/1Non-Violence and the Political Marketplacehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/09/non-violence-and-the-political-marketplace/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/09/non-violence-and-the-political-marketplace/#commentsWed, 09 Dec 2015 15:55:21 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3166Across a swathe of the world—most places in what we can call the ‘Greater Middle East’ from the Sahara and the Maghreb, through the Horn of Africa and the Levant to Iraq and Central Asia—political systems are moving away from institutional forms, away from familiar forms of nationalism, and away from familiar forms of democracy [...]]]>Across a swathe of the world—most places in what we can call the ‘Greater Middle East’ from the Sahara and the Maghreb, through the Horn of Africa and the Levant to Iraq and Central Asia—political systems are moving away from institutional forms, away from familiar forms of nationalism, and away from familiar forms of democracy and authoritarianism. They are instead characterized instead by turbulence and monetary patronage, by the penetration of political markets as the dominant form of political organization. I describe this in my recent book, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power. In all political systems, money and personal transactions over cooperation and allegiances play some kind of role. In most of the countries of the Greater Middle East, commonly known as ‘fragile states,’ marketized transactional politics is the dominant form.

As political systems come to resemble political marketplaces, the organization of non-violent political action also becomes more difficult. Another notable trend is that, as authoritarian governments in this region are overthrown, they are replaced, not by democracies, but by political markets.

In this short presentation I ask the question, how is it possible in such political marketplaces, to secure peace? How can organized violence be eliminated, or at least massively reduced? How can there be a political practice of non-violence?

My starting point is with the political understandings of the men (and they are almost entirely men) who run these political systems. We can accuse them of various kinds of crime, from corruption to mass murder, but we cannot accuse them of failing to understand their predicament, and we must recognize that some of them are extremely skilled at remaining in power against the odds. They are cruel but they are not only cruel—in fact the most effective ones are not, in their own terms, needlessly cruel. Their skill is that of the seaman, keeping a small boat afloat in stormy seas, not of the navigator, steering a large ship from one port to another.

First let me define a political marketplace. It is a system of governance that is driven by personal transactions of loyalty for reward. All political systems have this element: what characterizes a political marketplace is that all institutions, rules and laws are subordinate to this kind of bargaining. It is not a relict from an earlier era, a form of old-style patrimonialism that is due to be superseded in an era of state-building. Rather, it is an updated and thoroughly contemporary form of governance, found in countries that have undergone severe political and economic crisis. These countries may have outward signs of prosperity, social and economic development, and institution-building, but they are not on a trajectory towards a Weberian state.

This is the dominant form of political organization in many parts of the Greater Middle East. Most of the countries that underwent transitions from centralized authoritarian rule—through popular uprising, insurgency or foreign occupation—have ended up as advanced political markets. Their economies are rentier, based on commodity exports, aid and security cooperation, as well as illicit commerce. Their politics are driven by the three principles of political budget (cash for renting loyalties), the political market (the prevailing price of loyalties) and skill in political business management. Skilled political managers are entirely instrumental and deal with individuals in an opportunistic manner: there are no permanent friends or enemies, only peers, rivals, clients and contractors. Ethnic and sectarian loyalties are mobilized on an instrumental basis. These political systems are typically highly turbulent, unpredictable from week to week, but maintaining recognizable patterns over a long period of time.

Violence is a standard tool within a political market. It is a signal of presence in the market; it is a means of bargaining and especially a signifier of determination in pursuing the best price (highest for the claimant, lowest for the ruler). It can also be a means of reducing or eliminating a rival’s constituency, by killing, raping, robbing and destroying. Excessive violence is a risky strategy as it disturbs any near-equilibrium in the market and risks inviting in new players.

The qualities required for a political leader to prosper include having a wide network, skill in judging individuals and assessing situations, access to political funds, readiness to use force as required (but, preferably, not to use excessive force and invoke attendant dangers) and a reputation appropriate to his or her political business plans and strategy. Politics is more than a career: it is a vocation. The political entrepreneur or business manager has no private life, no holidays: he or she must live the political business strategy to the full, or fail.

What is peace under these circumstances? Most peace agreements are bargains struck among players in the marketplace, to share resources and reconfigure alliances. They divide the cake and construct a new configuration according to which they share out the rents. A peace agreement is as good as the market conditions in which it is made. It also typically involves the parties to the agreement organizing violence against those who have not joined. Often, such peace agreements actually see an upsurge in violence, as the signatories enforce their deal on those they describe as ‘spoilers’. A ‘successful’ peace deal in a political market is not an end to violence: rather it means that violence no longer matters (specifically, it is no longer a problem to those in power).

There isno longer a ‘victor’s peace’. While a strong and disciplined dictator of earlier eras could unleash massive violence, and could then stop it, today’s political business managers can inflict violence, but struggle to stop it. A memo or directive will not do. The leader does not sit atop a bureaucracy that can carry out his will, turning the machine of state on a dime. Rather, he issues an instruction that is at best reinterpreted, and at worst bargained, at every stage in the decision hierarchy. Saddam Hussein could inflict mass atrocity and then decide abruptly to stop when he had achieved his goals. His successors cannot order a halt to killing.

The main rationale for violence in the marketplace is political bargaining. Violent acts signify that a political entrepreneur has entered the market, and much bargaining is conducted through violence. This is not the violence of inter-group hatred, it is the violence of political business competition. As Marielle Debos says of the métier of violence in Chad: war is not fought because there are enemies, there are enemies because war is fought. Extremes of violence and mass atrocity typically arise either because of mistakes by political business managers, or because the stakes are very high (for example during a contested transition of national political leadership), or because one of the players in the market has decided that a rival can only be defeated by forcibly eliminating his constituency.

The political marketplace is structurally violent. Violent acts are embedded within it, and there is a constant danger that violence will escalate. But a well-run political market is also prone to lower levels of violence than modernist state-building—and especially revolutionary modernism in the 1970s and ‘80s. Violence is an inefficient and risky strategy in a political market, and is best used sparingly. A common feature of a well-regulated political market is elite truce: members of the elites don’t kill one another, on the sound business principle that it is preferable to deal with known quantities rather than newcomerts, and that today’s enemy can be tomorrow’s friend. We should not dismiss political markets as dystopian, just as we should not see them as transient stages to be surpassed quickly. We should understand that they are here to stay, and investigate how they can be made less violent.

A marketplace analysis allows us to see how mistakes in law enforcement, counter-terror or peacemaking can lead to worse outcomes. Decapitating a criminal cartel in a political marketplace will probably lead to a proliferation of lower-level criminal entrepreneurs, more violent and less well regulated. Decapitating a violent extremist organization will have a similar outcome, as well as generating more anger and resentment among its constituents. Trying to enforce a peace agreement without the resources that would enable a political budgetary buy-in will likely lead to repression, as the parties to the agreement remove claimants and rivals.

Achieving non-violence in a political marketplace is therefore a very different task to eliminating men of violence or pressurizing belligerents to sign peace agreements.

Non-violent political mobilization can take several forms.

First is for an individual to act out of personal integrity to uphold justice and non-violence. An individual judge, chief, administrator, journalist, teacher, religious leader, etc., can uphold non-violence in a limited sphere. There are cases of principled individuals defying the pressure of political leaders and resisting financial inducements. An example is the decision by high court judges in South Sudan to throw out treason charges against political opponents of the government. In order to do this, the individual concerned needs many of the same qualities and capacities as an effective political entrepreneur: a wide network, skills in judging character and circumstance, and resources. Those individuals are also typically selective in applying their principles: they do enough to generate a reputation and a following, which protects them, but they cannot uphold principle on every occasion.

A civic activist must therefore be an entrepreneur, in the sense of treating human rights, humanitarian or peace work as a vocation, requiring complete personal commitment, rather than a profession. Civic activism cannot be organized on a project basis. It needs total commitment and readiness to adapt to changing circumstances.

A second approach is to make a political market more efficient. In principle, a well-run political market could be made to function with reduced violence, if the functions of signaling entrance into the political market and bargaining could be carried out by other means, for example through elections or non-violent demonstrations, violence would be reduced. As countries urbanize, and as communication improves, this may indeed be a long-term trend. Some initiatives have enhanced this feature, for example the use of the internet and social media by Ushahidi in Kenya. Communication among elites increases the possibility that they will conduct their business with limited violence. Another approach to this is to enhance the coordination of political finance: if those who provide the funds for political entrepreneurs to operate coordinate to insist that politics is conducted with less violence, then politicians will comply.

Aid and security cooperation are sources of rents that are readily translated into the political budgets of politicians. Aid projects have a poor record of promoting civic action: often they promote the monetization of voluntary work and thereby undermine the spirit of civic solidarity that is so essential to political mobilization. Official aid and especially military assistance tends to benefit those in power, giving them greater resources, discretion and legitimacy. However, the international assistance apparatus has proved a useful mechanism for providing livelihoods for counter-elites, and means of them communicating and organizing, and aid mechanisms have generally promoted liberal norms.

Third is to challenge the structure and logic of the political market itself. No political system can function solely on the basis of transactions, there have to be animating norms, values and ideals. Political entrepreneurs utilize these for building their following. Typically they call upon a rubric of ‘moral populism’, to invoke ethnicity or religion, to create in-groups and out-groups. But it is also possible to draw upon societal norms to resist violence. For example, the memorialization of the dead can be a means for invoking the deepest conceptions of what it is to be a human being. These kinds of mobilization—around funerals, remembrances—may be transient, but can be powerful nonetheless. Another example of how people can mobilize resistance is around land rights, one of the most fundamental components of identity in rural societies. Language and cultural rights are another rallying point, remarkably resistant to co-option by elites.

We should not labor under the illusion that institutions can be built, and rules and procedures established, in these societies, in the foreseeable future. The standard formulae for state-building are therefore unlikely to be relevant. Rather, the focus of action should be on building on the political vernaculars and existing societal values, to enhance non-violent practices.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/09/non-violence-and-the-political-marketplace/feed/2The changing nature of knowledge production in fragile stateshttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/04/3156/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/04/3156/#respondFri, 04 Dec 2015 14:31:57 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3156We are excited to share with you a new online symposium developed by our colleagues at Humanity, on the changing nature of knowledge production in fragile states. In light of the intensification of evidence-based policymaking and the “data revolution” in development, the symposium asks what the ethical and political implications are for qualitative research as a tool of governance. The symposium will begin tomorrow with a short paper from Deval Desai and Rebecca Tapscott, followed by responses during the week from Lisa Denney and Pilar Domingo (ODI); Michael Woolcock (World Bank); Morten Jerven (Norwegian University of Life Sciences and Simon Fraser University); Alex de Waal (World Peace Foundation); and Holly Porter (LSE). We hope that you enjoy the symposium and participate in the debate!

In December 2014, we held two workshops in Gulu, Uganda, to explore some of our intuitions and initial ideas that emerged from several years of working at the nexus of research and development. How widespread were the challenges posed by market conditions for research? Could they be expressed systematically, or were they still embedded in the fantasy of the organic narrative?

Over two days, we gathered approximately 20 Ugandan and foreign researchers to discuss some of the ethical questions we’ve posed here, focusing on the relationship between foreign researchers and local research assistants. This relationship is a key one in the research supply chain. It is explicitly contractual. The research assistant is paid to translate context. At times, the researcher further relies on that translation to make ethical choices (whether to pay research subjects for participation, how to respond to corruption in the research institution…).

International researchers energetically described ethical challenges, discussing the compromises they have to make on a day-to-day basis as part of the job. Several repeatedly raised the notion of “bringing research back” to communities they had studied as a key ethical move, a way of validating research when they could not promise direct benefits from the research itself. For some, “bringing research back” described an ongoing process of engagement with research subjects that began well before completion of the research and which continued long after. For others, “bringing research back” entailed presenting a final product, the last opportunity for subjects to participate in shaping the product, and symbolizing the end of field research, a form of closure of the relationships between researcher and researched, where ethical obligations similarly would cease. In the research supply chain, either approach to bringing research back can be understood as a move to depoliticizes the researcher: it circumscribes relationships and obligations by focusing on research findings, reified in a physical document, that become the site of political struggle. What relationships remain exist as a matter of individual engagement and ethical choice. From this perspective, bringing research back can distract us from the lingering and systematic effects that the research process might have on local power structures or individual narratives, which are instead a matter for future researchers to take into account when designing their methodology.

Ugandan researchers, by contrast, remain proximate to—and frequently part of—those lingering effects after the research is over. Working with internationals is a job. They assured us that they would tell their international employers if anything ethically problematic came up and established their bonafides with stories of the unscrupulous practices of other foreign researchers. At the end of the day, however, a number of participants pointed out that to raise questions about a potential employer’s project would be bad for business. Although we set ethical standards at the global level, and rely on local researchers to implement them in a context specific way, the research supply chain highlights the improbability of this. Local researchers have a doubled consciousness. They see international researchers as both individuals and as part of a broader system—sources of repeat work and possible connections to other employment opportunities.

The authors asked their participants to “draw their research environment.” Top: a Ugandan researcher drew an image of the research process as a chain (with no prompting from the authors). Bottom: an international researcher illustrated the contradictions between submerging herself in the context while at the same time standing over and moving through it.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/04/3156/feed/0South Sudan: No Money, No peacehttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/02/south-sudan-no-money-no-peace/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/12/02/south-sudan-no-money-no-peace/#commentsWed, 02 Dec 2015 18:11:20 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3153Excerpt from “No money, no peace” by Alex de Waal in Foreign Policy, Wednesday, December 2, 2015. Available in full here.

Currently out of the headlines, South Sudan’s war, which began in December 2013, is a brutal competition for power between President Salva Kiir and his former vice president, Riek Machar. This conflict [...]]]>

Excerpt from “No money, no peace” by Alex de Waal in Foreign Policy, Wednesday, December 2, 2015. Available in full here.

Currently out of the headlines, South Sudan’s war, which began in December 2013, is a brutal competition for power between President Salva Kiir and his former vice president, Riek Machar. This conflict in the world’s youngest state has left tens of thousands dead. In August, African mediators drafted a “Compromise Peace Agreement” to try to end the fighting. The U.S. role was to ratchet up pressure on the warring leaders to sign it. This was difficult enough — but maintaining smart pressure on those leaders for sufficient time to actually implement the deal will prove well-nigh impossible.

The United States’ support for peace in South Sudan offers a lesson in the shortcomings of the dominant American model for fixing countries in conflict: squeeze their leaders until they cry “uncle” and agree to pretend to be democrats. The problem with this is that the pretense cannot be upheld for long. Different, more complex tools are needed to consolidate a ceasefire and establish a workable power-sharing arrangement. To keep the peace, South Sudanese leaders need enough funds, and the discretion to use them, to grease the wheels of their patronage machines and buy a real peace that’s not just on paper. If the U.S. is to involve itself in fixing conflicts — and not just in South Sudan — it needs to recognize this disagreeable truth.

The Compromise Peace Agreement follows the standard template: power-sharing among belligerents; attempts to make security arrangements (a ceasefire and building a national military and security sector); division of national wealth; elections; and a truth, reconciliation, and justice process. It’s attractive on paper, but lacks the fundamental requirements of a working deal. There’s little goodwill, either between the leaders who signed the deal, or between them and the outside parties — their African neighbors and the United States — who imposed it. President Kiir was conspicuously reluctant, and felt insulted when his detailed reservations were unceremoniously discarded. Machar, too, has been visibly skeptical, dragging his feet on filling in the details of the security plan.

This paper discusses how the Eritrea People’s Liberation Front evolved from a liberation front (1971-1991), into a highly successful organization with clear social and political agenda, and, ultimately, into an oppressive state where power is concentrated in the hands of the President and his close network.

The EPLF rose as a liberation army, involving the Eritrean people in an exceptionally arduous armed struggle against a major African army backed by world major powers to win independence. It was an effective fighting machine with clear people-centered ideology and a unique organization that captured the imagination of practically every Eritrean. As an organization, it forged solidarity and camaraderie between diverse Eritrean ethnic, class and gender groups, across rural and urban areas, and between Eritreans living inside the country as well as outside, for one great purpose – the liberation of the people, gaining independence of the country, through getting rid of the Ethiopian occupation force from Eritrea.

The paper documents how the EPLF changed towards the end of the fight for Eritrean liberation and then manifestly failed to provide its people with the fruits of democracy once war ended. In peacetime, people were promoted based on fidelity to the President and dissent was harshly silenced. The disastrous war with Ethiopia was in many ways caused by and further fueled these tendencies. Today, political dissent and news media have been squashed, and Eritreans are fleeing their country in large numbers.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/11/30/new-wpf-occasional-paper-on-eritrea/feed/0Assassinating Terrorists Does Not Workhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/11/24/assassinating-terrorists-does-not-work/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/11/24/assassinating-terrorists-does-not-work/#commentsTue, 24 Nov 2015 15:06:29 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3145Below is an excerpt from Alex de Waal’s essay, “Assassinating Terrorists Does Not Work,” available in full at The Boston Review, November 24, 2015.

Two important events in the confrontation between the Islamic State and the West occurred on November 12 and 13. Although overshadowed by the Paris atrocities, they warrant our attention. On [...]]]>

Below is an excerpt from Alex de Waal’s essay, “Assassinating Terrorists Does Not Work,” available in full at The Boston Review, November 24, 2015.

Two important events in the confrontation between the Islamic State and the West occurred on November 12 and 13. Although overshadowed by the Paris atrocities, they warrant our attention. On November 12, Mohammed Emwazi (“Jihadi John”) was killed by a drone missile in the Syrian city of Al-Raqqa, in a joint U.S.-British operation. On November 13, the commander of IS in Libya, an Iraqi national called Abu Nabil (also known as Wissam Najm Abd Zayd al-Zubaydi), was killed by a U.S. air strike. These two high-profile killings were part of an ongoing American campaign to systematically assassinate terrorist leaders—“high-value targets”—a strategy that has become a central component of the War on Terror.

More than ever, it is crucial to debate the political strategy behind such targeted killings. Insofar as there is a political rationale to these acts of remote execution, it is deeply suspect. Even the pragmatic rationale is flawed: the evidence is that targeted killings make us less safe, not more.

The policy of assassinating high-value targets, modeled after Israeli practices, was adopted in the early days of the U.S. War on Terror but escalated by the Obama Administration with the aid of drone technology. Advocates describe it as an efficient way of killing terrorists that poses minimal risk to service members and entails much lower collateral damage than do conventional attacks. Most of the controversy around targeted killing has concerned the legality of using lethal means outside of war zones, and the numbers of civilians killed in these strikes. There has been also an underlying worry about what will happen when (inevitably and soon) the technology of remote assassination is possessed by other countries, which will then be able to cite U.S. actions as precedents for what they choose to do. These are valid concerns.

However, too little effort has been given to questioning the logic of systematic remote execution of high-value targets in the first place. Is it actually wise? Let us assume that those killed—such as Jihadi John and Abu Nabil—are indeed guilty of horrendous crimes and are planning further such crimes, and that mounting conventional operations to kill or capture them would not be feasible. The question still remains, is it an effective strategy to assassinate the leaders of extremist, terrorist, or criminal organizations? It’s one thing to kill a terrorist commander during a police or military operation, such as hot pursuit or breaking a siege. It’s quite different to elevate killing extremists from tactical combat necessity to a guiding strategic principle.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/11/24/assassinating-terrorists-does-not-work/feed/1The quest for good governance in the Ethiopian public sectorhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/11/16/the-quest-for-good-governance-in-the-ethiopian-public-sector/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/11/16/the-quest-for-good-governance-in-the-ethiopian-public-sector/#commentsMon, 16 Nov 2015 12:32:38 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3137Reading a working paper by the Washington based Center for Global Development, titled ‘Escaping capability traps through Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA)’ made me think of the continued investment of the Ethiopian government to improve good governance in public service delivery, and the little return it brought in terms of sustained improvement in the [...]]]>Reading a working paper by the Washington based Center for Global Development, titled ‘Escaping capability traps through Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA)’ made me think of the continued investment of the Ethiopian government to improve good governance in public service delivery, and the little return it brought in terms of sustained improvement in the sector.

Good governance is a dismal performance in the Ethiopian public sector. Very recently, there was a live broadcast on Ethiopian Television focused on a study report on good governance in the Ethiopian public sector. The report highlighted that the absence of good governance is prevalent in all sectors and regions without any variation. The report further indicated that the problem seems systemic rather than episodic to some sectors, regions, or circumstances. All top officials of the regime including the prime minister seemed to be in agreement with the findings of the report. The top officials suggested that the problem is testing the survival and continuity of the ongoing development endeavors and agreed that the survival of the regime is at stake when and if the problems continue unabated. The officials were in further agreement that it is necessary to implement both long-term plans to address the root causes and short-term interventions to provide some immediate respite in response to the growing frustration with the governance failures. The long-term solution was identified as ‘institution building’ and short-term interventions as ‘massive mobilization to create awareness and provide quick fixes’ to the ongoing problems.

The Ethiopian government has been engaged in several reform programs to improve the delivery of services within the public sector. A reform program under the title ‘civil service reform program’ was launched in 2003 and ran for three years. Not long after that a new reform program titled, ‘Business Process Reengineering,’ was launched and ran for three consecutive years; later on additional reform programs attempting to introduce ‘Balanced Record Card’, ‘Kaizen,’ were introduced and ran for some time. Unfortunately, whatever achievement the reform programs have gained, it is agreed that they couldn’t address the problems of good governance. The reason for their failure to achieve sustained improvements in governance seems to be because they were merely isomorphic mimicry-that is, government institutions pretended to reform by changing how they looked rather than how they delivered actual services in a sustainable way.

The main problem in the inefficiency of public service delivery is that the performance of institutions and their leaders is measured against agenda-conformity rather than enhanced functionality, a trap that closes the path for improved performance. Lower level officials tend to puppet higher level officials through agenda conformity and improved performance gets closed. Institutions focus on looking like successful organizations; leaders seek organizational survival, continued budgets and rents by complying with external standards of legitimacy instead of encouraging new ideas, products and solutions, while front line workers choose routine compliances at their best on customers, clients, and citizens they serve. Bill boards standing at the gates of each public office articulating the vision, mission, and values of the organization and a diagram of work processes and responsibilities of each office are the only remaining indicators for the expensive public service programs while there is almost none related to the sustained improved performance of the offices.

All three major civil service reform programs were exclusively top-down. The problems of the public service were framed by the former Civil Service Commission and later Ministry of Civil Service and the packages for addressing the problems were prepared at national level. Officials from different levels of government and public enterprise were given training on the intended reform agenda and the contents of its package. Required from them was not any innovative solution to address the problems of their institution, but merely implementation of the designed package. The diverse nature of the problems was not appreciated and provided a single definition.

Business Process Reengineering, one of the major reform projects the government ran during the last ten years, for example, had little to do with improving the quality of higher education at the time. Academic administration that places the highest value for academic excellence; educators who have the interest and time to constantly work to update their scholarship; and the sufficient availability of high-quality academic resources are the key things that affect the overall quality of an educational system. Academic administrators selected for their agenda-conformity, and educators who have little understanding of academic freedom can’t deliver anything better. No matter how you reengineer the delivery of education, the educators continue to feel that their services are not properly appreciated by the public sector. They will continue to fail to share the obvious, leave alone to diligently work to improve the standard, through rigorous research. I had the feeling that reform to improve governance in Ethiopia requires a different approach. Top-down solutions run in the mode of a ‘campaign’ do not deliver results. The approach suggested in the PDIA paper might be a worth trying.

The paper highlights the ‘capability traps’ found in developing countries despite the fact that governments remain engaged in developmental rhetoric and continue to receive developmental resources. It suggests a new approach: the Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), which is based on four principles, each of which stands in sharp contrast to the standard approaches. First, PDIA focuses on solving locally nominated and defined problems in performance (as opposed to transplanting preconceived and packaged ‘best practice’ solutions). Second, it seeks to create an authorizing environment for decision-making that encourages positive deviance and experimentation (as opposed to designing projects and programs and then requiring agents to implement them exactly as designed). Third, it embeds this experimentation in tight feedback loops that facilitate rapid experimental learning (as opposed to enduring long lag times in learning from ex-post ‘evaluation’). Fourth, it actively engages a wide array of agents to ensure that reform is viable, legitimate, relevant, and supportable (as opposed to a narrow set of external experts promoting the top-down diffusion of innovation).

The article highlights the main challenges to reform programs in developing nations and is worth reading. Anyone interested to read the article can access it following this link.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/11/16/the-quest-for-good-governance-in-the-ethiopian-public-sector/feed/1Event Summary: Advocacy in Conflict Book Launchhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/11/13/event-summary-advocacy-in-conflict-book-launch/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/11/13/event-summary-advocacy-in-conflict-book-launch/#respondFri, 13 Nov 2015 12:58:50 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3133How legitimate and accountable are Westerners who advocate for geographically and culturally distinct issues? If the legitimacy of these Western actors is not derived from those people on whose behalf they are advocating, what gives these ‘activists’ the right to propose solutions? Who are these advocates accountable to, if they do harm? How can advocacy [...]]]>How legitimate and accountable are Westerners who advocate for geographically and culturally distinct issues? If the legitimacy of these Western actors is not derived from those people on whose behalf they are advocating, what gives these ‘activists’ the right to propose solutions? Who are these advocates accountable to, if they do harm? How can advocacy campaigns be more inclusive and account for multiplicity of narratives? These are some of the central questions considered in Advocacy in Conflict: Critical Perspectives on Transnational Activism, ed. Alex de Waal with Jennifer Ambrose, Casey Hogle, Teisha Taneja, and Keren Yohanne (London: Zed Books, 2015).

On 26 October 2015, the World Peace Foundation invited contributors Anat Biletzki (Albert Schweitzer Professor of Philosophy, Quinnipiac University; Professor of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University), Laura Seay (Assistant Professor, Department of Government, Colby College) and Alex De Waal (Executive Director, World Peace Foundation and Research Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy) to speak about the book at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. They were joined by Trisha Taneja and Jennifer Ambrose (both graduates of the Fletcher School) who contributed to, and edited the book with De Waal.

De Waal began by arguing that transnational advocacy had historically been shaped by the anti-colonial and civil-rights movements, where Western groups had acted in solidarity with ‘southern’ activists. These relationships between southern and western actors have been reshaped by new power relationships where the organisations of the south no longer have ownership over their own narratives – the discourses of transnational advocacy are now often shaped and defined by well-funded Western NGOs (such as the Enough Project). These Western NGOs wield enormous influence in choosing topics for advocacy efforts, selecting a southern NGO or activist as a junior partner or client, and determining the nature of advocacy. These advocacy efforts are themselves geared and calibrated towards a particular segment of western policy-making audiences, perhaps with the intention of initiating a conversation between advocacy organisations and policymakers about the use of particular policy tools. Unfortunately, this transfer of ‘ownership’ and political bias in advocacy efforts can lead to an unhealthy failure to get to grips with the problems of people who are ostensibly being represented!

Laura Seay expanded on these broad themes in her presentation. She argued that, in trying to present a simple, appealing narrative for easy consumption by western policy-makers and western audiences, transnational advocacy organisations sometimes exacerbate the condition of those that they are claiming to represent. Her research focuses on the advocacy efforts around conflict minerals in the Congo – the sale and trade of which may benefit armed groups active in the region. Advocacy efforts around Congolese conflict minerals have suffered from several elementary problems – they presented the argument that the conflict in Congo was caused by the western demand for these minerals; they overstated the death toll in the region and targeted minerals that were not mined in the conflict areas. They have also been extremely successful in pushing a particular legislative agenda, for example, these advocacy efforts led to the inclusion of section 1502 in the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, which required companies listed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to file periodic reports on their due diligence efforts to exclude conflict minerals from their products. The logic of the campaign was: reduce the demand for these minerals, cut off revenues for the armed groups, and thereby reduce actual violence. These legislative and advocacy efforts had a number of unintended consequences, however – a blanket prohibition on mining of conflict minerals was put in place by the Congolese government and a number of companies stopped purchasing these minerals because of the difficulty of certifying their products as being ‘conflict-mineral-free’. In particular, the consequences for the Congolese were catastrophic – livelihoods were destroyed (a large number of miners migrated), violence increased (perhaps, as competition over remaining resources intensified) and development indicators all appear to have deteriorated in the affected regions. Seay argued that this response to the conflict was entirely conceived of in Washington. Only after the policy had been produced did advocacy organisations involve Congolese NGOs.

Biletzki, a professor of linguistics, spoke about how these categories of ‘the West’ and the ‘coloniser’ were less clearly defined in the context of advocacy efforts around Gaza. Instead, she identified three kinds of advocacy – ‘ironic’, ‘straightforward’, and ‘convoluted’. ‘Ironic’ advocacy efforts are advocacy efforts by, and for Israel – they portray Israel as the victim, despite being the primary violator of humanitarian norms. ‘Straightforward’ advocacy measures include advocacy for Gaza on the internet or in media, by Palestinians or Palestinian supporters. Biletzki suggested that it is a peculiar characteristic of this advocacy that is largely driven by people engaging in digital networks much more than the regular media (which has been affected, effected and influenced by Israel and its supporters). ‘Convoluted’ advocacy, which she finds the most interesting, involves advocacy efforts by Israeli human rights organisations on behalf of people in Gaza.

Debate around the conflict is particularly polarised – the conflict is considered a zero-sum game between two parties, and Israeli NGO efforts on behalf of Palestine are often described by pro-Israel groups as ‘betrayal’ and treason’. As a result, Israeli activists in these organisations have to constantly reflect on their own identity. She argued further, that this has been aggravated since the 2014 war in Gaza, and the discourse has moved beyond the victim-perpetrator dichotomy which had existed earlier. Within Israeli society, Israeli human rights work has now been completely delegitimised.

Ambrose and Taneja concluded the presentation by speaking about the origin of the book project, and the lack of critical work on transnational advocacy that had motivated them to organise a seminar on the topic. They also cautioned that while the creation of simplistic narratives and western (or celebrity) ‘ownership’ of advocacy remains deeply problematic, local ownership also needs to be critically examined, so as to avoid the perpetuation and amplification of existing power hierarchies.

In the question and answer session, the panelists were asked a diverse set of questions, broadly centred around the themes of the narrow framing of issues by advocacy organisations; the unique nature of the American political system (with its multitudes of lobbyists) and whether it was shaping advocacy movements; the role of researchers (especially given that research itself can be considered a political activity) in helping advocacy movements strike a balance between engaging people while remaining critical of the methods adopted for advocacy, and an overarching question on what it meant for an advocacy movement to have been ‘successful’.

The panelists responded by suggesting that the narrow framing of issues was connected to the likelihood of advocacy movements being less inclusive. In general, framing issues narrowly (such as in the Congo conflict minerals case) isolates these particular issues from the context in which they arose, therefore increasing the likelihood of policy solutions aimed at addressing these issues being unsustainable and having unforeseen consequences.

Biletzki and Taneja suggested that the industry centred on advocacy was slightly different in the United States than in Europe or Canada. De Waal argued, on the other hand, that although it was possibly true that the role of advocacy organisations was particularly accentuated in the USA, however, the core issues remained the same across much of the developed world (with highly media-tised consumer cultures) where the power to set the agenda for advocacy has become pivotal.

All the panelists agreed that research was a political process. In Ambrose’s post-graduate career, this began with choosing issues to focus on and included selecting the location of projects and selecting local partners. Seay suggested that researchers can help provide context to advocacy organisations and make their projects more inclusive. Biletzki argued that the real challenge was in trying to be political and universalist at the same time.

The panelists concluded by suggesting that successful cases of advocacy were much harder to demonstrate than problematic cases. That said, successful advocacy campaigns are likely to be those which have mobilised a diverse array of constituencies.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/11/13/event-summary-advocacy-in-conflict-book-launch/feed/0Exorcising the Balkan Ghosthttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/11/10/exorcising-the-balkan-ghost/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/11/10/exorcising-the-balkan-ghost/#respondTue, 10 Nov 2015 13:06:34 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3126If you journey to a town, entering through a valley into a warren of backstreets, your view of the location is very different than if you had taken the mountain road, approaching the town with a vista that enabled you to see its entirety, stretched out along a river, covering the expanse of a valley and wandering up [...]]]>If you journey to a town, entering through a valley into a warren of backstreets, your view of the location is very different than if you had taken the mountain road, approaching the town with a vista that enabled you to see its entirety, stretched out along a river, covering the expanse of a valley and wandering up its hillsides. In short, sometimes, even if the end point is the same, it is the approach that matters.

This was what I thought as I read James Stavridis’ essay on lessons from the Balkans for Syria’s endgame. Some of his policy takeaways are salient: following a conflict as bloody and destructive as the one Syria is experiencing, anything like recovery and stability will require decades of work. Key to ending the war is to find the right negotiators and realize that no side will get everything they want—ending this war will be the work of compromise.

But other parts resonated with memories of how similarly misguided approaches intensified the violence in Bosnia. These may be questions of approach, but they are important. In this category, I highlight Stavridis’ embrace of Balkan Ghosts by Robert Kaplan. The book is not brilliant, at least not in policy terms. In fact, it marks a retreat from policy, a submission to social relations as forces of nature that cannot be impacted; a narrative of the world unraveling into chaos. Laura Rozen, a journalist who covers the former Yugoslavia extensively, extracts a demonstrative excerpt from Kaplan’s book, its heated overwriting, lack of nuance and love of drama:

“Here [in the Balkans] men have been isolated by poverty and ethnic rivalry, dooming them to hate,” Kaplan writes of his search for history, as he travels south from prosperous European Austria to disintegrating prewar Yugoslavia. “Here politics has been reduced to a level of near anarchy. What does the earth look like in the places where people commit atrocities? Is there a bad smell, a genius loci, something about the landscape that might incriminate?”

However, Rozen points out, the volume largely ignored Bosnia in its tour of the Balkans, and the equally powerful Balkan history of coexistence, which was particularly marked in the Bosnian experience–a detail? Perhaps, but these details, she writes, mattered:

It mattered that members of a cosmopolitan civilization that lived and breathed and supported multiethnicity — a population largely ignored in the book — were being forced from their homes and murdered by those fighting for fascist, ethnically “pure” states carved out through genocide. And the fact that those decent, civilized people were mostly absent from Kaplan’s portrait of the Balkans outraged those who couldn’t stand to watch them being slaughtered by thugs.

Kaplan says, “If I knew what would happen, I would have been clearer in bringing out those points,” Kaplan says. “I did add a more blunt preface to later editions, that says this is only a travel book.”

But caveats aside, Kaplan’s narative erases the choices individuals made that determined the path of the war. War is never inevitable, and, what is more, globally, armed conflict was on significant decline until very recently. Arguably, two narratives helped revive war in the post-Cold War context, humanitarian intervention, renamed R2P, and the Global War on Terror. Together, they polished the reputation of war, provided a model and issued an invitation for others to join. Nonetheless, the world is not heading down a path of ancient violence reawakening to consume entire peoples–to the extent that path is visible in certain places, it is a sidetrail, marked by violent upheavals (like overthrowing governments), outrageously poor governance deemed acceptable by allies until the very last moment, and the provision of materiel.

So how does a travel narrative arguing that forces beyond human rationality (i.e., beyond history, politics and policy) are driving violence become transformed into a lauded policy position for ethnic partition, applicable to multiple contexts? There are so many ways to tear this apart, that I thought it would even be ridiculous to expect to see it ever again. That is the wonder of foreign policy debates in the US—no idea is ever too bad to die. These policy proposals just lurk and are trotted out at the next crisis masquerading as fresh perspective, untainted by all the harm in their wake.

What Bosnia needed, and what it arguably still lacks, is a coherent political governance system with a central government empowered to run the country. It is systematically blocked from this through the Dayton Peace Agreement, which was good, in that it ended the war, but a very bad grounds on which to build a country. Why? Because it was a built on the premise of ancient ethnic hatreds; the ‘best’ system, this perspective argues, is one that assumes ethnicity must be hard wired into elections and sub-state systems. Why would anyone be surprised that the result is entrenched ethnic political parties more concerned with self-perpetuation than governing? These are not the only parties, there have been valiant efforts by Bosnians to re-claim a functional political space, and I hope over the long-run that they triumph.

Ethnic partition sounds like a realist’s proposal—they just cannot live together, so let’s try to make separation as painless and viable as is possible. Right? Here is the thing, in Bosnia, the promise of partition fueled violence; I would not be alone to argue that it did so from day one of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, when a clear, unified international position confirming the political borders instead of the “ethnic borders” as the basis for the new states would have helped. And there is strong scholarly consensus that this is precisely what happened during the 1993 schism between the Bosniaks and Croats, which was made possible by deep antagonisms and brought on full force in response to the map that accompanied the Vance-Owen Peace Plan. Tell people they get to keep that they ‘cleanse’ and control, and it should be no surprise that they will double their efforts, with disastrous consequences for civilians.

In any case, Bosnia isn’t Syria. In Bosnia there was a government, yes, newly established and, yes, not the ideal government for some of its people—but there was a government that could have been supported. In this case, separatist insurgents backed by neighboring Serbia committed genocide to claim land for themselves. In Syria, it is the government who initiated brutal assaults against civilians. This choice has without any question changed its acceptability. But overthrowing a government, even an extremely bad one, is not the same task as supporting a decent one. As in Libya, a moment of vulnerability, created by the Syrian government itself with its reprehensible response to civilian protests, was seized upon by western states and regional actors alike to pursue regime change. The feeding frenzy of violence has involved arms and funds from Gulf states; the direct involvement of the US, Iran, Russia (and occasionally the Gulf states when they’re not busy bombing elsewhere); and the rise of the IS, one of the most unpalatable non-state actors ever to raise its head.

How on earth can you move from here to an endgame? I agree with Stavridis on several points: International engagement will be key—but only if one views international engagement within the parameters of reality, that is, the challenge is not merely to exert more engagement, but to change the engagement already underway. Throw your weight behind the State Department effort–which will take time–by expending considerable resources to: a. bring our ‘allies’ into line behind a peace plan, c. make compromises with the key people who are not our allies, and c. stop the ridiculous expenditure of US military force in Syria. For all the money, weapons and lives involved in the ‘military solution’ it is well past time to recognize that there is no military solution. This is not to say that military action is irrelevant. As diplomacy helps forge a possible endgame, military action in service of that plan may be valuable–I don’t know what the plan will be; but without ‘service,’ we’re just shooting diplomacy in the foot and risking even worse potential outcomes.

It is time to finally and fully exorcise the Balkan ghost that mistakes politics for the winds of nature. History sets the stage, but at the end of the day, the lesson from Bosnia is that the conditions of war or peace and functional or dysfunctional states, are the products of decisions made by key leaders within the political systems they create, or that are created for them. When international actors lend their weight to one side or another, they are also taking action; it is important to take the action that has the best chance of reducing violence.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/11/10/exorcising-the-balkan-ghost/feed/0What leaders readhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/26/more-on-what-leaders-read/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/26/more-on-what-leaders-read/#respondMon, 26 Oct 2015 12:03:02 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3119Alex de Waal’s recent blog included a long and interesting quote from Jean-Marie Guéhenno. In a way, Guéhenno would seem to be in agreement with Kissinger. They both seem to assert the importance of prior intellectual knowledge and high-offices are less of a place for growing intellectually. What Kissinger articulated was: “High office teaches decision making, [...]]]>Alex de Waal’s recent blog included a long and interesting quote from Jean-Marie Guéhenno. In a way, Guéhenno would seem to be in agreement with Kissinger. They both seem to assert the importance of prior intellectual knowledge and high-offices are less of a place for growing intellectually. What Kissinger articulated was: “High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.”

However, I think this is only true for high-office holders at well-established institutions and not to office-holders where institutions are weak or absent.

Strong institutions have established norms, values, principles, clear structures, and operational guidelines. They have their own life, their institutional environment imposes limitations and border lines to whoever operator gets into them. They are like an established science laboratory where operators are expected to make right decisions in using them, a practice that only requires prior intellectual knowledge and acquaintance with the rules and standard operating procedures of the lab.

In the same parallel, the absence of institutions for a someone who wants to experiment means he/she should build his/her own laboratory, an exercise which requires a lot of thinking, weighing options, and even theorizing. A high office in the absence of strong institutions means he/she faces with intellectual challenges every now and then. This means office holders are required to think, practice, re-think, and theorize. I would imagine that office holders will intellectually grow as they are constantly challenged intellectually in a ‘free’ environment to think and practice.

The leaders of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), for example, were young boys in their early twenties with very little intellectual capital. At their early age, they were faced with several challenges and questions to meet and answer. What form of struggle- violent or peaceful?, If violent which form of violence-urban insurrection or protracted armed struggle? Whichever they choose, they were required to determine the tactic and strategy to use in all fronts and aspects of the struggle. The type of challenges they faced and the questions they were required are so many to put them in one piece and they were constantly changing through the development of the struggle in the 17 years of the armed struggle and the early days in government. This meant that they were constantly engaged in knowing, thinking, practicing, refining thinking etc…This meant that high-officers in the TPLF both during and after the armed struggle were growing intellectually rather than consuming what they had. In short while agreeing to their articulation on the importance of prior intellectual capital in operation I tend to disagree with its generalization.

It would be very much interesting to discuss the meaning of this reality to the uptake strategy of research outputs. What is relevant research product for policy community and how should it be packaged so that the policy community can read it and make use of it? are some of the questions that needs to be further discussed.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/26/more-on-what-leaders-read/feed/0Scott Straus: Making and Unmaking Nationshttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/22/scott-straus-making-and-unmaking-nations/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/22/scott-straus-making-and-unmaking-nations/#commentsThu, 22 Oct 2015 20:24:32 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3114Why and how does genocide takes place—and why does it not happen in places where it may have seemed likely or even inevitable? This is the starting point of Scott Straus’ new book, Making and Unmaking Nations: War, Leadership and Genocide in Modern Africa. Straus, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, suggests that existing theories of genocide over-predict the outcome they attempt to explain. While many countries share commonly understood risks for genocide—including civil war, political instability, xenophobic rhetoric—only a few cases escalate to genocide.

On October 20, 2015, the World Peace Foundation and Tufts Initiative on Mass Atrocities and Genocide invited Scott Straus to present the key findings from his book. Straus started his presentation by laying out the research puzzle. Why does mass violence develop in some cases but not others? He tackles this problem by systematically comparing cases in post-Cold War, sub-Saharan Africa that experienced genocide with those that did not, despite the presence of similar risk factors: Mali, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Rwanda and Sudan (Darfur). He finds that deep-rooted ideologies—national founding narratives—play a crucial role in shaping strategies of violence.

In his lecture, Straus explained his decision to rely on qualitative, controlled comparisons to explore his research question. By focusing only on post-Cold War Africa, he wanted to avoid the challenge of comparing highly dissimilar cases that has plagued the genocide literature. Most studies of genocide focus on cases as divergent as Ottoman Turkey, the Holocaust during World War II, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and more recent conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda. Further, Straus’ study of “negative cases” alongside two recent African “positive” (in the sense that genocide did occur) allowed him to identify not only drivers of escalation, but also factors of restraint.

The logic of genocide, Straus argued, is different from other types of mass violence in three main ways: it is group-selective rather than indiscriminate, group-destructive rather than coercive, and it is large-scale and sustained. Leaders who pursue genocide typically view the target group as dangerous, unco-optable, and uncontainable. Nonetheless, genocide should be seen as the outcome of an escalatory process rather than a predetermined campaign. As such, it is subject to decisions that drive escalation and de-escalation.

What explains escalation? Straus emphasizes the combination of security motives and ideology. Threat is a key driver of violence, typically maximized in wartime. But not all wars lead to genocide. Straus’ theoretical innovation is to highlight the central role played by founding narratives. Founding narratives define the core identity of a state – who is part of the political community and who is not, and who are the rightful power holders. These founding narratives are shaped by political leaders at critical junctures in a country’s history—in the case of post-colonial African states, independence often provides this moment. When a state’s founding narrative establishes a core and exclusive “us” whose fundamental project is threatened by war, genocide becomes more likely. By analyzing presidential speeches and interviewing local elites, Straus found that in Cote d’Ivoire, Mali and Senegal, inclusive founding narratives crafted by influential postcolonial leaders constrained the strategies of political elites in moments of acute crisis. He further noted that weak state capacity and economic interests can serve as additional factors of restraint.

For instance in Cote d’Ivoire, the country’s first president Félix Houphouët-Boigny downplayed internal divisions and emphasized the country’s multiethnic identity. In his interviews with Ivorian military and political elites, Straus found that decision-makers repeatedly referenced this inclusive vision as a key barrier to genocidal violence. In contrast, Rwanda’s founding narrative was Hutu majority rule that rejected both Belgian colonial rule and the Tutsi monarchy, a principle embraced by both post-independence presidents as well as the main political opposition actors through the 1990s. This narrative associated democracy with Hutu rule and framed Hutus as the only legitimate power-holders.

In conclusion, Straus highlighted the need to bring ideology back into the study of political violence. Particularly in the African context, he emphasized the need to pay attention to the legacies and political vision of nationalist presidents, which have had a lasting impact on politics on the continent today. The implications for policy, he underlined, are to some degree pessimistic: the sources of genocide prevention are primarily domestic. However, Straus suggested that regional and international actors can work to reinforce pluralism, diminish the threat of war, and interrupt armed coalitions and capacity.

In the Q&A with the audience, Straus noted that his definition of genocide differs from the legal definition to some degree: it focuses less on establishing intent than on defining a distinct logic and capacity to inflict widespread violence on a targeted group. Asked about the role of civil society, he argued that he did not find it to be a powerful explanatory variable in the cases he examined, particularly in the face of a powerful state. He concluded by reflecting on the nature and resilience of founding narratives. The “stickiness” of these narratives, he suggested, is likely to be associated with the success and legacy of the leaders who framed them. New leaders can rise and offer counter-narratives, such as President Gbagbo did in Cote d’Ivoire. Different narratives might also vie for dominance at different points in time. These narratives are antecedent to elite strategies – they shape what is viewed as acceptable or unacceptable in war. The research task laid out by Straus is a crucial one: understanding and specifying the causal stories that lead from ideas to violence.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/22/scott-straus-making-and-unmaking-nations/feed/1What Does the Head of UN Peacekeeping Read?https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/19/what-does-the-head-of-un-peacekeeping-read/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/19/what-does-the-head-of-un-peacekeeping-read/#respondMon, 19 Oct 2015 11:36:33 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3108Occasionally, a senior international policymaker provides a candid, on-the-record, reflection on the question of what he or she reads, and how academics might best influence policy.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno, who was head of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations from 2000-2008, is a prime example of a self-identified intellectual who took on a very senior policymaking [...]]]>

Occasionally, a senior international policymaker provides a candid, on-the-record, reflection on the question of what he or she reads, and how academics might best influence policy.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno, who was head of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations from 2000-2008, is a prime example of a self-identified intellectual who took on a very senior policymaking position, who has provided us with an insight into this. In the prologue to his book, The Fog of Peace: A memoir of international peacekeeping in the 21st century (Washington DC: Brookings, 2015).

Guéhenno reflects on this question. His passage is worth quoting at some length:

Before I became the head of peacekeeping, I had a reputation as an intellectual rather than as an operator. I never thought that being characterized as an intellectual should be taken as an insult, although I know that it usually does not help a career to be called an intellectual or a thinker. It suggests that you cannot operate but does not guarantee that you can really think. Having had to become an operator, I have not lost my respect for thinking, but I do believe that a lot of the “thinking” that goes on is useless for operators. The most useless way to pretend to help is to offer detailed, specific solutions, or recipes. There are dozens of political science books that look like “how to” books. They do not have the texture of life and therefore fall off the hand. Operators do not read much. They do not have the time. I, who was an avid reader, read much less during those eight years [at the U.N.] than I used to. And the more operational I became, the less interested I was in operational books. I would either read memoirs, history books, or real philosophy. What I needed was the fraternal companionship of other actors before me who had had to deal with confusion, grapple with the unknown, and yet had made decisions. What I also needed was the solidity of true abstraction and the harmony of good visual art (music does not do it for me; I can hardly sing the French national anthem). What I needed was, in times of difficulty, distance of the mind.

The unfortunate truth is, however, that when you are immersed in action, you live mostly on the intellectual capital you acquired beforehand; you draw on it. You may be accumulating, in some corner of your brain, new patterns, new chains of thinking that will eventually help you, but you are not really aware of it, and you certainly do not have the time to reflect on it.

When I now reflect on what helped me most, I find it is not the knowledge that the bureaucrats who determine how to conduct an interview in the UN would characterize as “directly relevant.” What I knew about specific crisis situations, or about institutional procedures, would quickly be outdated, often insufficient, while a well-drafted note could tell me all I needed to know. What helped me, what I could not find in any note, was the philosophical and ethical framework I had acquired in my classical studies.

This resonates closely with my own experience of working with senior mediators, UN officials and similar people. Insofar as they read the reports of (for example) the International Crisis Group, Human Rights Watch or others, it is not for analysis or prescriptions for policy, it is out of curiosity about the line that those groups are taking. When they read politics, it is the “real politics” of transactions and decision-making under situations of stress, urgency and uncertainty—the politics of “who, whom” (qua Lenin). With a few notable exceptions, the only quantitative or “scientific” materials they read are economics.

It includes two kinds of overlapping events, which have hitherto largely been studied separately. One set of events is great and catastrophic famines. A famine is defined as a food crisis that causes elevated mortality over a specific period of time. Using the criteria developed by Stephen Devereux (Devereux 2000) for ‘great famines’ (100,000 or more excess deaths) and ‘catastrophic famines’ (one million or more excess deaths), it includes any famine for which the upper estimate of excess deaths falls above 100,000. Using the four-point scale for ‘famine crimes’ developed by David Marcus (Marcus 2003), it also includes episodes of mass intentional starvation. For these events, the threshold is 10,000 deaths by starvation for inclusion in the listing. However, only events of mass intentional starvation that caused over 100,000 deaths are included in the quantitative dataset, on which the graphs are based.

There are major methodological issues with the estimation of excess mortality. Generally speaking, better demographic calculations lead to lower estimations of excess deaths than those provided by journalists and other contemporary observers. We might therefore reasonably expect an upward bias in the figures for earlier famines on the record. On the other hand, contemporary definitions of famine (e.g. Howe and Devereux 2004) provide thresholds for nutrition and mortality that correspond with normal or near-normal conditions in many historic societies (see Ó Gráda 2015, pp. 174-5).

Government Accountability Office, 2006. Darfur Crisis: Death Estimates Demonstrate Severity of Crisis, but Their Accuracy and Credibility Could Be Enhanced, U.S. GAO, Report GAO-07-24. Washington DC.

Gilbert, Martin, 1994. The First World War: A Complete History. New York: Henry Holt.

Goodkind, D., L. West, and P. Johnson, 2011. “A Reassessment of Mortality in North Korea, 1993-2008.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Washington, DC. http://paa2011.princeton.edu/papers/111030.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/12/historic-famines-and-episodes-of-mass-intentional-starvation/feed/0Syria: Whose war is better?https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/08/syria-whose-war-is-better/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/08/syria-whose-war-is-better/#respondThu, 08 Oct 2015 17:31:17 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3103It is very easy to poke holes in Putin’s Syria gambit. If he really wanted peace, argues Tuesday’s NYT editorial, he would have nudged his ally Bashar al-Asad to negotiate long before this late moment. Russia analysts seem to agree that Putin’s policy has as much to do with internal Russian politics, shoring up Russian relevance to global politics and projecting strength as it does with any goals in Syria. And the targets suggest that ISIS is only one of the groups in Russian crosshairs, although the question of whether they targeted an al Qaeda affiliate should make us wonder who we support. It does seem that their goal is to win the war for the current Syrian regime that has unquestionably committed gross, widespread and brutal abuses against its own population. The immediate impact might be a shift in dynamics that, if seized upon, could provide an opening for all the key players to negotiate, but the long-term prospects conjure up the word ‘quagmire.’

For the pundits and critics of the Russians, these arguments are easy to produce, because they draw on glaring facts. But Putin’s critique of the policies of the US and its allies is just as valid. We have also played to win a war rather than negotiate a peace, starting with the unbendable line that Asad must go, a factor that may have had a significant influence limiting Asad’s supporters from being able to back negotiations, even if they had wanted to. We have played the same game for years—seeking military defeat—but have done it with less material commitment than the Russians.

The turn from nonviolent protest to war was enabled by rapid infusion of weaponry to opposition groups (see here, here and here); despite the fact that non-violent change has a stronger proven record. Asad’s crackdown against protesters was overwhelming, but that does not translate into carte blanche for regime change by military force. It is a fallacy to limit civilian protection to toppling governments. The arming of ‘vetted’ rebels has proven to be a ludicrous policy—arms ‘flow’ by nature, particularly in a complex war like this. What is more, you cannot blame rebels for seeking to build what we might term unsavory alliances (also here), with groups that are affiliated with al Qaeda and hardcore Islamists; they are fighting for their lives and would be stupid to use our criteria for picking favorites. So ‘we’ end up now with radical Islamist allies and yet think the vetted insurgents can still pull off a victory. What is more, this scenario envisions winning two wars against all odds: a defeat of Asad and a conflict to consolidate a post-Asad Syria. Should the first war be won, a distant prospect, the second war has a serious chance of looking like the 12 years of violence in post-Hussein Iraq or the mess of Libya rather than anything verging on a pluralistic, western-leaning, minority protecting democracy.

Critics of either U.S. or Russian policy would prefer the rhetorical simplicity of merely pointing out flaws in the other’s position. What is really the problem is that both want war. If stability is the desired outcome, then Putin’s pro-government position makes more sense and he appears to be applying levels of force to match his ambition. It’s as if he looked at U.S. policy and said, if war is your answer, then you have to do it for real. If a client state is the desired outcome, Putin’s policy is also the more coherent one. Let’s not play coy, it’s an endorsement of violence that western governments have found palatable if the winner is the right regime: think of the Sri Lankan government’s defeat of the Tamil Tigers, Al Sisi’s brutal crackdown and return to military rule in Egypt–both of which garnered little critique from western allies. Supporting brutal governments is more likely to succeed than the farcical pretense that limited support to the ‘good’ rebels can turn the tide.

In any case, the most likely outcome of all these pro-war positions is continued conflict.

If protection of civilian lives and carving a greater space for democratic practice is the desired outcome, then it’s time to seize the moment and negotiate, playing hardball for a political solution that provides institutional guarantees for democratizing processes. Democracy after all isn’t a change in the guard; it’s a much longer, more difficult change in the game. It might still be possible to help further this goal—but it won’t be achieved in any short-term scenario and it won’t be a battlefield outcome. What this might look like requires serious Syria expertise: here are two starting points: Julien Barnes-Dacey and Hugh Roberts. We also have a third foreign policy expert—Secretary of State John Kerry–who hinted this was the way to go, but backed down when pro-Saudi camps feared this meant a re-alignment of power in the Middle East. It may be time to revisit this idea and quickly.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/08/syria-whose-war-is-better/feed/0Is It Ever Legal to Bomb a Hospital?https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/06/is-it-ever-legal-to-bomb-a-hospital/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/06/is-it-ever-legal-to-bomb-a-hospital/#respondTue, 06 Oct 2015 12:01:12 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3101Dr. Omar was conducting an exploratory laparotomy on a female patient with a bullet wound in her abdomen when the entire hospital shook with the sound of explosions. Windows were shattering and a light and plaster fell from the ceiling. A nurse ran in to say that a missile had been fired through the wall [...]]]>Dr. Omar was conducting an exploratory laparotomy on a female patient with a bullet wound in her abdomen when the entire hospital shook with the sound of explosions. Windows were shattering and a light and plaster fell from the ceiling. A nurse ran in to say that a missile had been fired through the wall of another operating theater, that three patients had been killed, and staff and patients were rushing to take shelter in the basement. Dr. Omar stayed with his patient, stitching her up even while the building reverberated with the assault.

This was June 17, 1993, in Mogadishu. Digfer hospital, the largest in the Somali capital, was attacked by U.S. helicopters and Moroccan armored units, as part of a United Nations force. In a separate incident, a missile was fired into a compound of Médecins Sans Frontières.

Armed with a copy of the Geneva Conventions (with Somali banknotes as bookmarks), and handwritten interview notes from my inquiries at Digfer hospital and elsewhere, I asked exactly the same question 22 years ago in Mogadishu. The answer I got from the U.S. military attorney was that the intervening forces in Somalia were not bound by the Geneva Conventions, only by the UN Security Council resolution that authorized “all necessary force.” I gasped in incredulity. After I left the U.N. compound, an order was issued that I was to be detained, on the grounds of “supporting the propaganda efforts of the USC [United Somali Congress, Aideed’s forces].”

This was a shame—not only a deep stain on the record of the U.N. and the countries that contributed troops—but also a terrible precedent for the behavior of intervening forces. To those who dreamed that “Operation Restore Hope” would usher in a new world order, “humanitarian intervention” was a moral flag under which all acts could be justified, all errors forgiven. For the residents of Mogadishu, it was just another war.

In the battle of Mogadishu in the summer of 1993, new military doctrines of overwhelming force were tested in a densely-populated urban area, causing thousands of civilian casualties, with near-total impunity. The most advanced military targeting technologies of the day malfunctioned, causing (among other things) the house next door to the headquarters of General Mohamed Farah Aideed to be neatly flattened, and a meeting of clan elders discussing a peace proposal to be destroyed, with over fifty fatalities. Many of the calamitous errors and crimes committed by the intervening forces in Iraq and Afghanistan were prefigured in the Somali intervention.

Mogadishu made a mockery of the idea of a “humanitarian war”. How many times do we need to re-learn this rather obvious truth?

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/06/is-it-ever-legal-to-bomb-a-hospital/feed/0Burma’s Struggle for Democracy: A Critical Appraisalhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/01/burmas-struggle-for-democracy-a-critical-appraisal/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/01/burmas-struggle-for-democracy-a-critical-appraisal/#respondThu, 01 Oct 2015 12:05:15 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3096Below is an excerpt from “Burma’s Struggle for Democracy: A Critical Appraisal” by Maung Zarni with Trisha Taneja, the third chapter of the new WPF book, Advocacy In Conflict: Critical perspectives on transnational activism, by Alex de Waal with Jennifer Ambrose, Casey Hogle, Teisha Taneja, and Keren Yohanne (London: Zed Books, 2015). The editorial team emerged out if the World Peace Foundation student seminar competition in 2013.

It is a truism that anti-authoritarian movements and organizations tend to mirror their opponents in thinking, modes of operation and political practices, and especially to become intolerant of any view that differs from that of the leadership. And indeed, in Burma’s case, the choice to elevate Aung San Suu Kyi to the status of icon for democracy has had important and potentially fatal limitations, for both the domestic and international components of the democracy campaign.

The Burmese democratic movement, drawing its support from a highly diverse set of constituents, does not possess a coherent set of views and prescriptions, and there is much to be said for uniting around a single leader. But having Suu Kyi as an undisputed leader has major drawbacks. Because she has been elevated to a position in which she can do no wrong, other approaches to political change that are not in conformity with her publicly expressed views are generally interpreted by her supporters as a direct challenge to her leadership. During her years of opposition, anyone who dared criticize Suu Kyi was denounced as an apologist for the regime, and regarded as committing an act of heresy resulting in social ostracism, condemnation, personal slander and threats. In their attempts to ensure that Burmese democrats unite under Suu Kyi’s leadership, the opposition has stunted its own growth by limiting its communication with international actors to one channel and one message, even while internal and geopolitical changes demand a shift in strategies.

Analysts have criticized the Burmese democratic movement for inflexibility and failure to appreciate the need for a changing paradigm (Hlaing 2007) and for internal rivalries and factionalism (Taylor 2009). But neither of these faults, typical of exile and opposition movements, fully explains why the opposition movement continued to fight in the way that it did, and found itself at the mercy of a geopolitical shift that assumed the garb of democracy and human rights, respected neither, and co-opted the symbols of democratic resistance to a new political order, possessing fundamental continuities with its military predecessor.

The transnational advocacy movement for Burma has displayed important strengths, and in some respects is an important exemplar of the general framework advocated in this volume, able to create positive change while remaining grounded in complex national realities. Transnational activists for Burma served as a resource, supporting a national social or political movement as the primary actor. The widespread international deference to Suu Kyi’s leadership undoubtedly helped focus international policy on the domestic prerequisites and processes for democratic reform, and ultimately legitimized Suu Kyi’s long-standing insistence on dialogue with the regime. However, by transforming Suu Kyi into an international celebrity and promoting her National League for Democracy (NLD) as the principal agent of change, transnational activist groups became inflexible and unable to respond to changing realities. Their unconditional support for Aung San Suu Kyi allowed Western (primarily American) actors to selectively amplify a singular Burmese narrative, thus isolating other aspects of a complex Burmese political struggle. When political change did finally come, in a much-changed international context, the singular narrative impeded effective response to the challenges of peace, democracy and human rights in the country.

The campaign for Burmese democracy therefore illustrates the shift in transnational advocacy movements, exemplifying – despite its show of public solidarity with a national icon – a transfer of the power to set the agenda from national to Western actors, and has in fact further contributed to the ongoing political crisis, armed conflict and mass atrocity in the country. This chapter will critically examine the history of Burmese activism and resistance to successive military governments, and will discuss the events that led to the evolution of a Western-policy-centric model of transnational advocacy, and the implications of this model for Burmese political struggles.

[…]

Throughout the twenty-five years of the international campaign for Burma, the strengths and weaknesses of transnational activism have been symbolized by the person of Aung San Suu Kyi. As we appraise this history of activism, it becomes clear that ‘The Lady’ was manufactured as an icon of democracy and human rights by both Western and Burmese activists, and that this manufacture is one of the greatest political tragedies that the country has experienced, resulting in wasted potential and lost opportunities. Meanwhile, Western engagement with Burma has closely entwined policy with advocacy, and has served the changing interests of the national elites and the international economic order instead of helping to realize the rights of all Burmese, including members of already marginalized communities. Both the undemocratic culture and the strategically indifferent leadership of a pro-democracy opposition internationalized as the singular voice of Burma help explain why a movement that has so many dedicated grassroots dissidents and constituencies has failed so miserably – at great cost to the society. Tragically, the society remains sandwiched between strategically incompetent and strategically ignorant opposition leadership and the ruling clique of sinister generals and ex-generals.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/10/01/burmas-struggle-for-democracy-a-critical-appraisal/feed/0Genealogies of transnational activismhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/29/genealogies-of-transnational-activism/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/29/genealogies-of-transnational-activism/#respondTue, 29 Sep 2015 12:16:18 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3084We continue to offer you an inside glimpse of the new WPF book, Advocacy In Conflict: Critical perspectives on transnational activism, with an excerpt from Chapter 2 by Alex de Waal. The volume was edited by Alex de Waal with Jennifer Ambrose, Casey Hogle, Teisha Taneja, and Keren Yohanne (London: Zed Books, 2015). The editorial [...]]]>We continue to offer you an inside glimpse of the new WPF book, Advocacy In Conflict: Critical perspectives on transnational activism, with an excerpt from Chapter 2 by Alex de Waal. The volume was edited by Alex de Waal with Jennifer Ambrose, Casey Hogle, Teisha Taneja, and Keren Yohanne (London: Zed Books, 2015). The editorial team emerged out if the World Peace Foundation student seminar competition in 2013.

De Waal’s chapter, “Genealogies of Transnational Activism” provides a critical overview of the human rights movement:

The ideational and practical space for such advocacy is defined by the three approaches mentioned above: personal salvation or fulfillment; preserving social order and power relations; and collective action for transforming society in pursuit of a more just order.

An identifiably modern form of each of the three elements emerged in the late eighteenth century. Subsequently, the centres of gravity of these different forms of social action have shifted. Today’s transnational advocacy was shaped by the anti-colonial and civil rights struggles of the mid-twentieth century: movements that shared important precepts but also diverged on key principles. During the 1970s this evolved into a dominant model of adversarial advocacy headed by Western human rights organizations. In the 1990s, these models changed again with the post-Cold War atrocities in former Yugoslavia and sub-Saharan Africa and calls for intervention, and yet again with the war on terror and a parallel liberal anti-genocide interventionism. In parallel to the shift from ‘old’ social movements at national level that sought to organize governmental power for the benefit of broader constituencies, to ‘new’ ones concerned with freedom from such governmental intrusions (Kaldor 2003), we can see an evolution from movements for national self-determination from imperial rule, to anti-atrocity campaigning that extends intrusive forms of global governance into former colonies. Western governments – notably the Obama administration – have found mechanisms for managing today’s transnational advocacy lobbies. In part, they co-opt the advocates, and in part they make sufficient superficial adjustments to what the advocates demand to give a plausible illusion of influence.

Ambassador [Samantha] Power put the Obama administration’s approach cogently, speaking to Invisible Children: ‘what matters to us in government is our partnership with you. We need your voices and energy. We need your ideas and your sense of mission. We need your activism and your action. And since the most sustainable and effective policies are those with public support, your activism enables us to do more’ (Power 2013, emphasis added). What she generously credits the Kony2012 video with achieving was already in fact determined as policy by the White House and the Pentagon. By contrast, Vali Nasr, who served in Richard Holbrooke’s team, and witnessed the marginalization of diplomatic strategy in the Obama administration, has a different perspective. He writes:

In the cocoon of our public debate, Obama gets high marks on foreign policy. That is because his policies’ principal aim is not to make strategic choices but to satisfy public opinion – he has done more of the things that people want and fewer of the things that we have to do that may be unpopular. (Nasr 2013: 12)

Power’s passion may be genuine, but her government’s strategy boils down to co-opting the campaigners as voters. The concern of this chapter is what this episode tells us about the state of European and American transnational activism.

[…]

Insider policy advocacy The shift from wider social movement to specialist NGOs is replete with friction (Kaldor 2003; De Waal 2003; Tarrow 2011; Lang 2013). As Tarrow observes, many NGO advocates ‘come from social movement backgrounds and continue to think of themselves as movement activists, even as they lobby in the corridors of power or offer services to underprivileged groups’ (2011: 242). They bring coordination, power to amplify messages, and resources – in short, institutionalization and professionalization. But the relation- ship is fraught because hierarchies of power emerge. Charli Carpenter has analysed how members of the North American and European professional activist community choose human rights issues for advocacy. She observes that ‘my research shows that … a human security network exists as an empirical fact’ (2014: 5) and goes on to detail the links between issues, how those issues are framed, the ‘gatekeepers’ who ‘vet’ issues, funders, and the ‘advocacy superpowers’ that determine which issues become the focus for organized policy lobbying.

This network extends into government. Here we can observe the feedback loop between the former social movement activist who has become a broker between policy-makers in government, and his or her erstwhile comrades who are still active in a social movement. Sabine Lang (2013: 8) describes how, as more venues for institutional advocacy open up, it ‘might lead to NGOs becoming experts in institutional advocacy and lobbying at the expense of generating broader public debates’, and how, in turn, governments utilize NGOs as ‘proxy publics’, substitutes for broader consultation that are ‘just one phone call away’. The former activist becomes an insider lobbyist, seeking specific policy changes, and persuading activists to adjust their demands to what can be achieved within the policy process. Insiders in government – both executive and legislature – quickly learn to use this brokerage process their own advantage. To be effective, the specialist NGO must become literate in the substance and process of policy, and focused on the dual tasks of developing expert analysis and critique that is useful for the policy-maker, and identifying the maximally effective methods of exerting leverage in pursuit of these incremental policy goals. Its public language must be in two dialects: messages sufficiently simple and moralized to maintain a public constituency, but sufficiently coded for real intent to be clear to policy-makers. The lobbyist must balance effective leverage – enough pressure to be salient – while not overstepping the bounds of decorum to embarrass the policy-maker. In this tri- angle, professional expertise and institutional power win out: the agenda, issues and methods are set between the lobbyist and the policy-maker. The original activists in a social movement are either co-opted or marginalized.

These power relations are amplified in the case of a poor social movement using a vernacular in a Southern country, and a better- funded lobbying NGO in a Western capital. The Western NGO has enormous freedom of action. This begins with its selection of the issue and its choice of partner or client organization, a process that automatically relegates causes that fit less well with the institutional, political and fund-raising priorities of the sponsor. The issue in question is thus either the winner of the competition for attention in a competitive buyer’s market of causes (see Bob 2006) or one crafted by a local NGO precisely so as to gain the best chance of adoption in this market, following the example set by the Biafrans more than forty years ago. This power relationship continues such that the Western organization’s definition of the issue, preference for method, and relationship with its own government become the dominant set of factors in the circuit. The consequence is that the Southern NGO is principally a client of the Western lobby NGO, its funds and profile dependent on its foreign sponsor, or is left without profile and support.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/29/genealogies-of-transnational-activism/feed/0Advocacy In Conflicthttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/23/advocacy-in-conflict-2/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/23/advocacy-in-conflict-2/#respondWed, 23 Sep 2015 12:41:48 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3078To mark the publication of Advocacy In Conflict: Critical perspectives on transnational activism, ed. Alex de Waal with Jennifer Ambrose, Casey Hogle, Teisha Taneja, and Keren Yohanne (London: Zed Books, 2015), we are launching a series excerpted from select chapters. The editorial team emerged out if the World Peace Foundation student seminar competition in [...]]]>To mark the publication of Advocacy In Conflict: Critical perspectives on transnational activism, ed. Alex de Waal with Jennifer Ambrose, Casey Hogle, Teisha Taneja, and Keren Yohanne (London: Zed Books, 2015), we are launching a series excerpted from select chapters. The editorial team emerged out if the World Peace Foundation student seminar competition in 2013, and our first excerpt comes from former Fletcher students who first proposed the topic and wrote the introduction to the book, Jennifer Ambrose, Casey Hogle, Teisha Taneja, and Keren Yohanne.

‘Nothing for us without us’

Activists across time zones, decades and topics have used variations of the slogan ‘nothing for us without us’ to express a key tenet of responsible advocacy: people affected by conflict, rights abuses and other injustices should play the leading role in movements that advocate on their behalf. When repression, silencing or dispersal leaves those people disadvantaged, it places particular responsibilities on Western advocates to act in a way that allows the substantive agenda, targets and goals, media portrayal, and methods to be set in accordance with the articulated priorities of the affected population. Most recently associated with the international disability rights movement of the 1990s, ‘Nothing for us without us’ demands that audiences listen to the self-expressed interests and goals of oppressed people. In the wake of recent advocacy campaigns, such as Invisible Children’s Kony2012 film and the US Campaign for Burma’s ‘It Can’t Wait’ videos – both of which became international sensa- tions more for their tactics and messaging than for the issues they promote – the slogan encourages reflection on the extent to which recent trends in transnational advocacy have deviated from core principles of responsible activism. Hence, the impetus for this book is our recognition of the need to reclaim international advocacy movements to make them more self-reflective and accountable to the people and the evolving situations they represent.

Our focus is on a particular subset of transnational activism, itself a subset of activism more generally, namely professionalized Western advocacy concerned with particular conflicts in other parts of the world. While there is a rich literature on global society and activism (Kaldor 2003; Feher 2007; Reydams 2011), Western-led campaigns that focus on particular conflict-affected countries are dealt with only in passing. While individual campaigns such as Save Darfur have generated both controversy and research (Mamdani 2009; Hamilton 2011), there is little comparative analysis on how these movements fit with broader issues of global civil society. This book targets that gap, and our central argument is that the development of these specific forms of activism, in which advocates have shaped strategies to fit the requirements of marketing their cause to Western publics, and adapted them to score tactical successes with Western governments (especially that of the USA), has led to the weakening or even abandonment of key principles. This is akin to what Mary Kaldor (2003) calls the ‘taming’ of civil society, as social movements transform into professionalized NGOs. The key principles we identify as needing to be asserted or reclaimed include receptivity to the perspectives of affected people and their diverse narratives and attention to deeper, underlying causes, and therefore a focus on strategic change rather than superficial victories.

In March 2012, Invisible Children unveiled its Kony2012 campaign, based on sparse and ill-constructed logic, designed to ‘make Kony famous’. What soon became one of the most viral YouTube videos in history sparked a mad dash by the organization’s target audience of American high school and college students to purchase advocacy kits. With these kits, student activists purportedly possessed the tools needed to pressure the US Congress to take on the responsibility of stopping Joseph Kony (or, to be precise, not ending its support for efforts to stop him). However, the student activists and organizers ignored their obligation to represent the priorities of the affected population, a central tenet of responsible international advocacy. While students stepped up to the task of ‘saving’ the people of central Africa from the terror of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) – with- out being invited to consider the marginal role Africans themselves were allowed to play – the video’s misleading portrayal of the situ- ation on the ground sparked a widespread counter-movement and hearty discourse in the blogosphere. The Tumblr site most critical of Kony2012, Visible Children, gained thousands of followers, and major television networks began calling on academic experts to articulate their concerns over the campaign.

The Kony2012 video succeeded in propelling Joseph Kony to in- ternational stardom. The seemingly black-and-white, for-or-against Kony2012 debate that immediately followed the video’s release pro- vided a platform for everyone opposed to the campaign to name a plethora of reasons why it was bad. Few critics, however, could fully articulate how an international advocacy campaign in the twenty-first century should be conducted in an ethical, responsible and effective way. While Kony2012 made it clear that, with skilful use of media, a mass public campaign on an international issue can make a big splash, it reinforced the need for local leadership and for being con- scientious regarding the intricacies of a situation. As Kony2012 began to outshine home-grown advocacy movements and their objectives for Uganda, it also brought up the necessity of ensuring enough space for indigenous and international movements to work together, with local movements setting the agenda and Western groups offering resources, scale and solidarity.

Two years later, in April 2014, a leading instance of ‘hashtag activism’ – the #BringBackOurGirls campaign – demanded the return of the over two hundred Nigerian girls kidnapped from the Chibok girls’ school by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram. This has interesting echoes of the activism against the LRA, beginning with the way the LRA’s mass abduction of pupils from the Aboke girls’ school in 1996 suddenly provided a focal point for wider awareness and campaigning across Uganda. Similarly, Boko Haram had been killing, abducting and terrorizing for more than two years before Nigeria’s elite or Western actors began to take notice: it took the girls’ kidnapping for this to happen.

The kidnapping sparked the origination of #BringBackOurGirls locally before the campaign was amplified internationally. The Nigerian campaign focused equally on Boko Haram and on the Nigerian government, and its ineptitude, corruption and brutality. It criticizes not only Boko Haram’s devastating actions, but also the environment that has given the group its raison d’être and the ability to conduct such a major attack. Nigerians asked for the return of the Chibok girls, of course, but also for better governance, more security and less corruption. The activist message simplified a complicated story, but it did break through that domestic barrier.

The American narrative, though, diverged significantly from the original Nigerian campaign. Its focus is exclusively on Boko Haram. The Western campaign was not organized around a specific ‘ask’, but some Nigerians worried it would transmute into lobbying for American military action – as that is the default option for US foreign policy and American popular culture (Balogun 2014). However, despite the fact that Boko Haram is identified as a terrorist organization associated with al-Qaeda, the USA has not dispatched its own troops, at the time of writing. It provided surveillance aircraft to assist the Nigerian military, but US government spokespeople were openly critical of the Nigerian army’s record on corruption and human rights (Schmidt and Knowlton 2014).

What accounts for this less interventionist message and outcome? A large part of the reason is likely to be reluctance in the US Depart- ment of Defense, translating into a policy decision in the White House not to intervene (ibid.). Insofar as the leading Washington lobbyists on African human rights issues pick up this signal, they are unlikely to advocate for an intervention that would be strongly resisted. A second, related reason is that none of the American ‘advocacy superpowers’ (Carpenter 2014: 40) have taken up the cause, leaving the agenda-setting – by default – to the Nigerians. As a result, the #BringBackOurGirls campaign failed to create a lasting interna- tional publicity blitz; its presence on social media platforms rapidly dwindled. The campaign left its Western audience with a short and savvy glimpse into a complicated Nigerian story, having diluted the message and having had almost no international impact (Fisher 2014). Cognizant of the lessons of Kony2012, Nigerian activists may be grateful for this neglect.

With these two examples in mind, many questions demand further reflection regarding the future of international activism and how to more closely align efforts with the ‘nothing for us without us’ adage.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/23/advocacy-in-conflict-2/feed/0A regional approach to the Horn of Africa: The expanded mandate of the AUHIPhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/16/a-regional-approach-to-the-horn-of-africa-the-expanded-mandate-of-the-auhip/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/16/a-regional-approach-to-the-horn-of-africa-the-expanded-mandate-of-the-auhip/#respondWed, 16 Sep 2015 12:41:23 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3075The African Union Peace and Security Council (AUPSC) in its 539th meeting held on August 25, 2015, recognized the need to promote a regional and holistic approach to the challenges of peace, security, stability, and development in the region and expanded the mandate of the African Union High Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP) headed by President [...]]]>The African Union Peace and Security Council (AUPSC) in its 539th meeting held on August 25, 2015, recognized the need to promote a regional and holistic approach to the challenges of peace, security, stability, and development in the region and expanded the mandate of the African Union High Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP) headed by President Thabo Mbeki to include the initiation of regional dialogue to promote such an approach. This realization of the AUPSC is a major step in recognizing the regional dimension of the challenges in the region

AUHIP’s main mandate has been Sudan and South Sudan but that recent events show that the problems of those two countries can only be addressed in the context of a regional approach; for example, the South Sudan civil war shows that its resolution can be an uphill drive if the neighbors are not in agreement. Furthermore, there are broader policy harmonization issues that the AUHIP might engage.

Over the last decade, intervention by regional and international players to mitigate conflict situations in the region has been intensive. For example, one of every four of the United Nations peacekeepers (blue helmets) in the world is deployed in Sudan and South Sudan. If one also includes the African Union Mission in Somalia (green helmets), then, globally, one of every three peacekeeping soldiers is currently deployed in the region. The region has seen many mediation interventions over the last decade. Sudan alone has seen several: The mediation for peace in Darfur initially launched and managed by the African Union and later jointly taken with the United Nations; AU-mandated mediation to oversee the peaceful separation of South Sudan (AUHIP); the ongoing IGAD-mandated mediation to bring peace in South Sudan. Further, there are the continuing IGAD/AU/UN political missions to effectively bring back a state in Somalia; the UN supported AU political mission in Kenya to manage the 2007 post-election crisis in Kenya; and the LRA mediations sponsored by the United Nations. These are the most prominent mediations and political missions of the decade in the region.

Without disregarding the importance of the results brought about by these mediations and political missions, all of them are reactive and focused at the individual conflict cases. Given the regional character of some of the conflicts, a comparable regional approach has been in short supply. Most of the conflicts in the region are not the intra-state conflicts they appear to be; there is frequent regional engagement in conflicts whereby outside actors support one or the other proxy. It is also clear that some of the low level local conflicts (the Karamojong, the Somali conflict clusters for example) have regional dimensions. These conflicts can only be averted if the states harmonized their policies to the control and management of small arms, cattle rustling and ways of managing it, human and animal disease control policies and other similar borderland governance issues.

There is a massive movement of migrant and refugee populations in the region. A World Bank 2011 report indicates that a total of 3.8 million citizens in the Horn of Africa had left their countries in the last decade and only a third of them managed to travel out of the region, with the remaining staying within it. The numbers have increased since then. The three highest refugee hosting countries in the horn (Ethiopia, Kenya, and Sudan) for example are hosting a total refugee population of over 1.5 million according to 2015 UNHCR reports. The policies and practices of the member states towards these moving populations are varied. In the absence of transnational citizenship these moving populations end up being ‘nomads traveling without any rights on their backs’ as they lose their residency and employment rights once they cross the boundaries of their national origin. There is a dire need for the region to come up with a harmonized policy on how to manage issues of migrants and moving populations as this issue affects the welfare of their citizens and is a serious concern for their security.

The region has shared natural resources but mostly without proper governing regimes on how to use and manage them. The management of shared water resources, for example, is a prominent issue that has high stakes for regional stability. With the exception of the ongoing negotiations for the management and use of the Nile waters, there is no other regional regime that is under development to proactively manage this issue.

Three of the IGAD member states (Ethiopia, Uganda, and South Sudan) are landlocked countries that access the sea through states with coastal boundaries. With the exception of the International law of the sea that provides the broad principles and guidelines on the right to access the sea and to use sea borne resources, there is no single regional regime while the issue has been a point of tension at times underlying cause for inter-state conflicts in the region. The land locked countries do have bilateral agreements of varying natures with coastal states on transiting through and using their ports. However, the wider region requires a consolidated, long-term oriented regional regime to govern this relationship including a regional mechanism to resolve disputes around this issue.

Ethiopia has a huge potential for clean energy with an estimated potential hydropower capacity of 45,000 MW from its waters. This potential goes well beyond 60,000 MW if the potential for wind and thermal energy are included. The country is now investing largely to make this potential a reality and is looking for the export of energy to the neighboring states. It has already signed bilateral power purchase agreements with Djibouti, Sudan, and Kenya. The effective materialization of these projects will definitely provide a huge boost to the economic ties and development of the states. This makes it timely to think of a regional regime to govern the production and marketing of power. Such a regime could provide ample opportunity to mobilize capital requirement to exploit the potential from the region. It can also help to proactively prevent conflicts and tensions that might arise around the production and marketing of power in the region.

The new expanded mandate of the AUHIP can allow it to initiate regional conferences and dialogues to address such issues. This new initiative can also look into the bigger issue of developing a joint IGAD position on how to handle threats from outside the region, such as those from across the Red Sea. Once begun, it can also help improve the trust between member states and accelerate regional stability, economic development, and sustainable growth.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/16/a-regional-approach-to-the-horn-of-africa-the-expanded-mandate-of-the-auhip/feed/0South Sudan: Why a Political Crackdown Accompanies a Peace Agreementhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/11/south-sudan-why-a-political-crackdown-accompanies-a-peace-agreement/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/11/south-sudan-why-a-political-crackdown-accompanies-a-peace-agreement/#commentsFri, 11 Sep 2015 11:47:11 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3071It’s no coincidence that South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir cracked down hard on dissent at precisely the same moment that he reluctantly signed the ‘Compromise Peace Agreement’ that should, ostensibly, bring an end to the last twenty months of fighting with the SPLA-in Opposition forces. This also reveals why the tools of targeted financial sanctions, [...]]]>It’s no coincidence that South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir cracked down hard on dissent at precisely the same moment that he reluctantly signed the ‘Compromise Peace Agreement’ that should, ostensibly, bring an end to the last twenty months of fighting with the SPLA-in Opposition forces. This also reveals why the tools of targeted financial sanctions, newly fashionable in Washington DC, must be used with extreme caution lest they worsen the situation they are supposed to redress.

The basic facts are these. On August 27, under severe pressure from the IGAD mediators and their backers, notably the United States, Pres. Salva signed the ‘Compromise Peace Agreement’. Riek Machar, leader of the SPLM-iO, had seen the writing on the wall earlier and signed ten days earlier. Salva came to the signing ceremony with an extensive list of reservations, which the mediators promptly and somewhat insultingly announced they would disregard.

During these same days, Salva dismissed three governors, and a cracked down on Equatorian political opponents. The Equatorian leader Peter Abdelrahman Sule was killed, with suspicions falling on collusion between the Ugandan and South Sudanese intelligence services. There are daily reports of disappearances. Salva himself threatened journalists who did not support the government line. A journalist, Peter Moi Julius, was killed.

The events are connected. According to the political-commercial logic of the political marketplace, peace—an end to violent hostilities between belligerents—is a bargain to share out power and resources. There are basically two routes to such an agreement: either the belligerents engineer a buyout, or their financiers do so. The result is as durable as the conditions in the marketplace.

A good example of a belligerents’ buyout is the 2006 Juba Declaration whereby Salva Kiir was able to bring dissident southern Sudanese militia commanders into an expanded SPLA, and their political leaders into the SPLM and the Government of Southern Sudan. It was possible because oil revenues meant that there was enough money to satisfy all. It lasted for as long as the money flowed: when the funds stopped, the deal fell apart.

Today, if South Sudan’s oil production were increasing and the oil price were high, it might have been possible for a similar bargain to have been struck. Unfortunately, South Sudan’s economic crisis means that Salva simply doesn’t have the funds to attempt anything comparable. All his available political budget is devoted to maintaining a narrow power base. For a buyout peace, Salva needs a lot more money. South Sudan’s donors want peace but they don’t want to funnel their money into Salva’s personal bank account, so they’re not supporting this well-established route to peace.

Financiers can impose a political austerity package on belligerents, if they have the clout. This is what happened in Somaliland in 1992-93: the businessmen who controlled the livestock trade and remittances, compelled the factional leaders to negotiate a peace deal. They could do this because the factional leaders relied on them for money, and because the businessmen could, if they so wished, circumvent the politicians and deal directly with military commanders. In Somaliland, this was the foundation for a transformational process of building accountable government. South Sudan’s donors have floated ideas of putting the oil revenues under independent management, but they haven’t done it, and still less have they worked out how to turn that money into political finance for peace.

So, neither of the marketplace routes to peace exists today in South Sudan. The current Compromise Peace Agreement in South Sudan was drafted and imposed by the ‘IGAD Plus’ group of mediators. They used tools of financial coercion—threats of sanctions including individually targeted sanctions—to press the belligerents into signing an agreement. Implementing the agreement requires political will and political means. But neither the tools nor the agreement address the question of what the belligerent leaders need for political survival. If anything, targeting illicit financial activities makes the leaders’ predicament worse. How are Salva or Riek to maintain their political bases without an expanded political budget? Their lieutenants are not suddenly going to start demanding a lower price for allegiance, just because their patrons are cash-strapped or have signed a peace deal.

With a tightened political budget, the only way for a leader to stay in position is to narrow his political base. Hence Salva must reward his closest circle of supporters (who are his most immediate threats), which means discarding others. He must shift from buyout to coercion. So an international squeeze on political payments may cause Salva to increase repression. He will do this because it is demanded by the logic of survival. Salva’s not a good leader, but bad international policies can compel him to become a worse one.

Tackling South Sudan’s pathological political economy requires different ways of organizing political finance and controlling violence. Targeted sanctions cannot do this: they are tactical tools that shape incentives at the margin and cannot even compel political elites to hold a ceasefire for more than a few days, let alone promote any kind of transformation of South Sudanese politics. Nor is there a trade-off between democracy and peace—the short-term political reconfiguration in South Sudan will deliver on neither.

International policymakers may find sanctions appealing because they punish individuals who have misbehaved, and give the impression of doing something right. But those who advocate targeted sanctions should correctly analyze their context, and be aware of other consequences they may have. Those consequences may be deadly, as South Sudanese are discovering.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/11/south-sudan-why-a-political-crackdown-accompanies-a-peace-agreement/feed/2On the photo of three-year old Aylan Kurdihttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/04/on-the-photo-of-three-year-old-aylan-kurdi/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/04/on-the-photo-of-three-year-old-aylan-kurdi/#commentsFri, 04 Sep 2015 12:53:35 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3067I spent ten years working on issues related to contemporary genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, including developing an exhibition on genocide that presented brief histories of Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Darfur, Sudan. Needless to say, I have seen a lot of images and video of the impact of violence on the human body. What [...]]]>I spent ten years working on issues related to contemporary genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, including developing an exhibition on genocide that presented brief histories of Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Darfur, Sudan. Needless to say, I have seen a lot of images and video of the impact of violence on the human body. What always differentiated the Museum’s presentation of violence, I found, from news organizations or NGO presentations, was the deeply held understanding, resulting from the fact that so many people involved in the Museum’s creation and continued functioning were Holocaust survivors and the families of survivors, that any photo could be a picture of a deeply loved family member. The question of representing violence changes when scanning through the photos of people in extreme destitution and vulnerability in search of a familiar face.

This approach to representing violence and suffering is very difficult to live with. It is deeply painful. It does not provoke pity or self-reflection about “our” values or “our” actions; it is something much more piercing. I don’t think this impact can be replicated for those who are not searching for someone they love, aching for a glimpse of a grandfather, mother, uncle, aunt, or neighbor.

When it is not our community that has been caught in its moment of deepest suffering, another mechanism must kick in. Often, in the attempt to humanize a vulnerable community, pictures are presented that de-politicize—who cares if a man is killed because he took up a weapon in support of what he thought was his best chance, often calculated in terms of a very limited short-term future? That man is responsible for his condition, so we reason. The images designed to provoke the pity or empathy of a watching world are those of children and women, often presented as a single category that represents innocent suffering.

Innocence sells…even if it doesn’t sell enough to help everyone in need. Such photos instruct us to forget the complex political issues that sparked a conflict and that now serve to fuel and expand its lethal affects. Just open your wallet for the one simple thing we can all agree on: the innocent should not suffer. It is very easy to become cynical about the selling of innocence that reduces every crisis to the same repetition of humanitarian needs.

…and yet the photo of the little toddler, three-year old Aylan Kurdi, washed up on the shore, whose mother, Rehan, and five-year old brother, Galip, also died. Only his father, Abdullah, remains alive, a man whose grief is incomprehensible. This image—even if it is one more after thousands of others documenting death and dying at sea, many of them a direct consequence of the wars in Iraq and Syria—pierces.

But it cannot, as no photo can, tell us what to do beyond providing some solace to those in flight. Do this. Pour out support for the refugees and migrants, no one risks this flight unless they are hounded into the waters. Help them.

Also recognize that the impetus to flight is, in many instances in today’s spike of refugees, the war in Syria. This acknowledgement requires another set of responses.

If the insight has not yet sunk in after four years–fools, who think they can still get whatever they want if the violence just continues a little longer—let’s be clear: this war will end through a negotiated settlement in which no one will be fully satisfied. It will end with the defeat, as complete as is possible given the strength of the coalition created against them, of ISIS’s military capacity, and the engagement of all the international supporters of various armed sides in support of a mediated solution rather than a militarized one. And then the Syrians will ultimately agree to a resolution that no one will truly think vindicates their cause nor redeems the blood already spilled. The work of physically rebuilding the country, and, more importantly, creating a more democratic and responsive state will take decades longer—no matter what political dispensation is produced through a peace agreement. Fundamental social change takes time. The better Syria its population dreamed of will still need to be peacefully constructed.

This is obviously not an opinion contained within that image of a child’s body on the beach. Images do not tell us what should come next. But there are images that cut to the quick, and the image of Aylan Kurdi is one of those. In this case, I hope a photo does prompt recognition of both the profound human loss of each and every body washed up on shore and fallen inside the war zone, and the politics needed to change the situation.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/04/on-the-photo-of-three-year-old-aylan-kurdi/feed/1Mauritania: Release Biram Dah Abeidhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/02/mauritania-release-biram-dah-abeid/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/02/mauritania-release-biram-dah-abeid/#respondWed, 02 Sep 2015 11:57:27 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3063In November 2013, I attended a meeting in Dakar, Senegal that addressed how to memorialize slavery as part of an African Union Human Rights Memorial. The trip included a visit to Gorée Island, the notorious site from which untold numbers of African were sent to the Americas against their will as part of the [...]]]>In November 2013, I attended a meeting in Dakar, Senegal that addressed how to memorialize slavery as part of an African Union Human Rights Memorial. The trip included a visit to Gorée Island, the notorious site from which untold numbers of African were sent to the Americas against their will as part of the calamity that was the transatlantic slave trade. While this form of the trade has ended, one of the great human rights campaigns of all history, de facto slavery still exists. Part of the discussions in Senegal were focused on how to address contemporary forms of slavery. Among the participants at the forum was a small contingent of activists aiming to definitively end slave practices. They argued that our condemnation of historical slavery should be matched with commitment to counter all of its current forms.

One of these presenters was Biram Dah Abeid, President of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA) Mauritania, who described Mauritania as “the last slave state in the world.” Today, for his lifelong commitment to ending slavery in Mauritania, Biram is in jail. He was previously arrested for his work in 2010 and 2012. He was also a presidential candidate in Mauritania’s 2014 election and is the winner of multiple awards for his work including the 2013 UN Human Rights Prize. In November 2014, he was taken into police custody during a peaceful anti-slavery march. In January he was sentenced to two years in jail, and in the decision last week, a judge refused to overturn the sentence.

Slavery has assumed many different forms across historical periods and social-economic-political contexts. To capture variations in the core dynamics, citing Kevin Bales, slavery can be defined as: (1) one person completely controlling another (2) violence being used to maintain that control; and (3) that control being used to exploit people economically. But in Mauritania, according to The Global Slavery Index, slavery follows a very old, abusive model whereby a human are treated as the property of other human:

…has the highest prevalence of modern slavery in the world; an estimated four percent of the population are enslaved. Slavery is entrenched in Mauritanian society, and its prevalence is perpetuated by tradition. Also known as hereditary or chattel slavery, slave status is inherited generation to generation and is deeply rooted in social castes and the wider social system.

My dad, even though he was born and earned his freedom, he got married to a slave woman and had two kids. He wanted to bring his wife far away from them because he could only see her very late at night when her masters were sleeping. He wanted to have his wife with him, and he tried to bring her away from them. But her masters opposed him and brought him to court. The court ruled against my father, saying that his wife was a slave and belonged to her masters. They said, if [the family] wanted to sell her, he could buy his wife because she was just like their cow or their sheep. And he said, OK, in that case I’m going to take my kids. And the judge said that these kids don’t have a father, they only have a “progenitor,” because slavery is transmitted through a mother’s bloodline. So the children were the slaves of this master too.

His father’s experience helps explain why Biram became an anti-slavery activist. And that deep personal commitment is also why, despite the passage of laws against slavery in 2007, Biram has stated he will continue his work until the actual experiences of people in Mauritania match the promise of the law.

The new laws were ratified by those who hold power in Mauritania in order to avoid being sidelined by other nations and to be able to obtain money from the international community. That’s all. But we don’t actually implement them in Mauritania.

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/09/02/mauritania-release-biram-dah-abeid/feed/0Review of “The Look of Silence”https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/08/25/review-of-the-look-of-silence/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/08/25/review-of-the-look-of-silence/#respondTue, 25 Aug 2015 12:17:00 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3046Joshua Oppenheimer’s film, The Look of Silence, seems to argue that the kind of speech capable of social change shares much with silence. The film provides a companion reflection to how post-conflict or transitional justice is often conceived of as official speech. In transitional justice, the power of change is envisioned as working its [...]]]>Joshua Oppenheimer’s film, The Look of Silence, seems to argue that the kind of speech capable of social change shares much with silence. The film provides a companion reflection to how post-conflict or transitional justice is often conceived of as official speech. In transitional justice, the power of change is envisioned as working its way down from gavel to street. Pronouncements and reports, a changing of the guard, and a re-crafting of official narratives. Such change may well be necessary for societies to chart new paths in the wake of violence or mass injustice–and it is not a form of speech that Indonesia has yet uttered–but this is not the only kind of transformative speech. There is also everyday language, the paths of normality that get timeworn into relations between people. It is a more rough-hewn, story-based speech, composed of those tiny hierarchies people learn often as unreflectively as they learn to breath: who can speak and who will be heard.

This speech marks the location where sustainable change takes its first steps. The work of changing official speech and everyday speech is not synonymous, both are necessary. Adjustments in official speech clothe themselves in ostentatious proclamations that are highly visible and crave the spotlight, but this tendency should make one wary: new forms of official speech can provide mere cover for a continued enforcement of the hierarchies. It is much harder to see and hear the changes in everyday speech that slowly transform a dominant narrative into the possibility for a real conversation about the past.

This film captures the brave effort of one man to try to start such a conversation without the safety net of any adjustments to official speech. It tracks what happens when he refuses to abide by the hierarchy that protects unreformed official speech. What results is a beat of silence; an intrusion. It is an opening for a conversation that, for the most part, does not find an interlocutor.

The film, which is a pair to Oppenheimer’s 2012 film, The Act of Killing, follows Adi, a man of stunning dignity, an Indonesian optometrist in his forties, as he seeks out the men who killed his brother during the 1965-1966 massacres in Indonesia that targeted people suspected of being Communists. From the men who perpetrated the killing, to the commanders, and even a family member who was a low-level participant in the assaults, Adi listens as they describe their actions. He listens to them with enormous stillness; and quietly reveals that his brother was one of the men they killed.

Then the silence interrupts. The fact of having engaged in this murder—a fact accepted and even celebrated within a certain framework of Indonesian history—suddenly confronts a human framework of loss. There is no clash of facts here; everything has already been admitted. Nor is there is a demand for retribution, reparation or criminal justice—Adi’s quiet composure throughout the film seems to only make one request of his brother’s assailants. He has heard their stories, lived amongst their version of history; he seems only to ask that they acknowledge his story exists in the same world as their bravado-filled memories of killing. He approaches them as humans and simply asks the same in return.

What happens in the silence must be seen—this is not a story told on film, it is storytelling through the medium of film. The camera captures the silence that rushes into the void of refusal; and it becomes a character in the telling of the story. The camera lingers much longer than is comfortable for the natural flow of whatever the characters want to say. After two old men recount, and yes, even act out, their murder of Adi’s brother, they pose, smiling for the camera. But the scene continues as they stand there, uncertain of their next step. One of them mumbles something like, “that is life.” In another scene, the camera is welcomed into a house, changing the posture and glances of those it encounters, finally landing on one of Adi’s uncles. When the uncle’s part in the massacre is revealed, he holds his same facial expression, still aware of the camera, but now his smile hides an absolute refusal beneath the no-longer welcoming expression.

We are also asked repeatedly to train our eyes on Adi’s face, particularly his eyes, as he views footage of perpetrators discussing their acts of murder. We are asked to witness his commitment to seeing men brag about how they killed brother, and just to be silent with him.There will be no redemption, it is gruelingly painful exposure to the indecency of violence.

The film rejects sentiment. We never hear much at all about the murdered brother, Ramli. There is the story of his death, retold over and over from various perspectives, but no attempt to present his life to us. We learn of events and see conversations, entered into with ease and abruptly stopped after Adi reveals his familial connection to the victim.

But there is fear. Uncertain glances down the street as they visit a mass killing site; a sharp inhalation of breath when Adi’s mother learns what he is doing; and a threat from a local leader who has no interest in Adi’s project. It is decades past, but the power relations that enabled murder to benefit some at the price of loss for others remain intact. (Watch director Joshua Oppenheimer explain the precautions they took in making the film).

There is also tenderness and the sound of giggles within Adi’s family. In a film that needs no metaphors, Adi’s father, who claims to be 16 or 17 yet whose wife posits that he is 140, is blind and has lost much of his memory. His ancient frail body is cared for with love and light humor, even as his forgetting infuses a question into the film. He does not seem to remember the son who was murdered. Is the reclaimed innocence of forgetting, the passing of a generation, a preferable future than one arrived at by re-examining this horrible past?

No, the film, argues back, such forgetting is chimerical. It represents confusion. This subtle argument with memory and forgetting is the only way to make sense of the one scene where the camera lingered too long in silence. Adi’s father, portrayed with gentleness and love in every other scene, this time is presented in a room that he doesn’t recognize. He panics. He calls for help and shuffles his ancient body across the floor. His forgetting suddenly loses its sweet innocence and reveals a frightened and confused man. Forgetting may provide some illusion of comfort, the film argues, but it culminates in isolation.

Elsewhere in the film, forgetting isn’t even offered; the killing lives with ease, at home in the perpetrator’s memory and lives. Adi’s effort to interrupt this ease by asking for recognition of the human loss seems impossible, except for one moment. Adi talks with yet another participant in the murders, an old man who sits alongside his adult daughter. The daughter knows the story, apparently treats it as one of her elderly father’s anecdotes long since heard multiple times. Now a new detail emerges—he was among those who drank the blood of some of their victims, a ploy to ward off the insanity of committing murder. Her faces changes only slightly as she hears this; it is not part of the story she knew. And when she learns that Adi’s brother was among those killed, she, too, is quiet.

Then she offers an apology, undemonstrative yet powerfully moving. Her father sitting next to her wants the conversation to end, but she insists on engaging Adi, who responds with monumental humanity. Her father is her father, deserving of the love and respect as any father would. Her apology does not cancel her relation to him, Adi seems to say, even while it recognizes the profound loss that Adi’s family has suffered.

The moment does not repeat, but it leaves open possibility. In this possibility, with the resolute patience and insistence of the film and its brave central character, resides the glimmer of radical speech, the kind that can change everything. It is not borne out of the power to impose new paradigms, punish or draw on the toolhouse of official speech, but by risking the moment of silence that offers the only chance for beginning a new conversation.

This blog is part of a series on gender and ISIL. For a full discussion see Van Leuven, Dallin, Dyan Mazurana and Rachel Gordon (forthcoming), “Analysing Foreign Females and Males in the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL) through a Gender Perspective,” Foreign Fighters under International Law and Beyond, edited by Andrea de Guttry, Francesca Capone and Christopher Paulussen, ASSER/Springer Verlag.

The core message ISIL delivers to potential male recruits is that manhood is synonymous with their interpretation of Islam and the fight to achieve the caliphate. ISIL crafts a gendered narrative to exploit cleavages between sympathetic Muslims and their home countries. The group suggests not only that Muslims cannot be “real” men and women outside the Islamic State, but that they cannot be “true” Muslims either. As Michael Kimmel suggests, masculinity is a dynamic trait that can be denied, seized, recognized, and conferred by others—particularly other men and at times through violence. ISIL’s message: Where the world “denies” potential recruits their masculinity, the Islamic State is ready to confer. The group promises these young men that by immigrating to the combat zones of Iraq and Syria, they will “reclaim” their masculinity by assuming their idealized gender roles of fighter and protector.

ISIL’s media presence is calculated to draw young men and women as recruits. To appeal to young men, it employs hyper-militarized, hyper-masculinized and particularly violent motifs to portray its fighters as the epitome of “real men.” Such violent masculine imagery of power over other males reaffirms Kimmel’s theory that masculinity is not an inherent state of being, but is rather a status that is conferred by others—particularly other males.[i]

This message is disseminated by tens of thousands of ISIL’s supporters, many of whom have made the journey to Syria or Iraq. These muhajirat – pilgrims – explicitly equate their travel to the so-called Islamic State to a religious duty. They also regale their friends, families, and followers back home with stories of victories, salaries, and their new wives and/or sex slaves. When young Tunisian men who wished to join told the New York Times that ISIL recruits “live better than us!” they were effectively saying, “They are more manly than us!”

Not only is ISIL perceived by some as more successful and disciplined than other fighting forces in the area, but it is reportedly the highest-paying opposition militia in Syria.[ii] ISIL is attracting foreign families by providing food, salaries, and accommodations worth over US$1000 a month to those who immigrate with their families to the so-called Islamic State.[iii] “The more they are successful at creating a whole new society, the more they are able to attract entire families,” Dr. Bloom stated, “It’s almost like the American dream, but the Islamic State’s version of it.”[iv]

These factors—combining male power through violence, the potential of being rewarded, and having one’s masculinity reinforced by access to forced wives, sexual slaves or wives recruited by ISIL—make the organization attractive to a number of young men. Indeed, ISIL internet messages compare the dull, isolated and discouraging lives their potential male recruits are leading to the glories and excitement of being involved in nothing less than apocalyptic battles between good and evil. These fantasies can be particularly appealing to young men who feel ostracized, disempowered and unmanly.

As Kimmel writes, “Masculinity is not, however, the experience of power; it is the experience of entitlement to power”[v] that comes from previous centuries of some males domination and supremacy over other males and females. Yet the current reality is that many men are in fact dis-empowered and therefore resort to violence in an attempt to reassert their “rightful” power over girls, women and other men.[vi] ISIL recruiters identify and feed this desire for violent and “righteous” male domination and empowerment. For the Islamic State, masculinity means subjugation—over non-Muslims, girls, women, and other men. This can be seen in ISIL’s propaganda: stage managed images and videos where their fighters stand firm and menacing over captured (often soon-to-be-executed) men or choreographed slow-motion combat scenes. It can also be seen in their enslavement of women and girls for domestic service and sexual enslavement, as well as in forcing Christians within the group’s territory to pay an extortive tax known as jizya.

Furthermore, by bringing their families, and by building and securing families with wives provided by ISIL, the group hopes that its foreign recruits will be more dedicated to building and defending the so-called Islamic State and its new society. Some male foreign fighters are bringing their wives and children with them, rather than leaving them behind as foreign fighters in other conflicts often do.[vii] German convert Denis Cuspert (who goes by the name of Abu Talha al-Almani), appeared in an hour-long ISIL video and called upon Muslims to join him in Syria and to bring their families: “What shall a family do alone in the land of [unbelievers] and you are alone in the land of honor? I advise you: If you emigrate take your family with you.”[viii]

Migration to the so-called Islamic State also appears to be motivated by a lack of attachment to one’s home country due to a constellation of gendered, social, ethnic, religious, economic, and/or political schisms.[ix] Mayor Hans Bonte of the Belgian town of Vilvoorde, which saw 28 residents (both male and female) leave for Syria, said that, “What they all have in common is a feeling of rootlessness, of not belonging.”[x] In this way, it is a search for identity and belonging that draws women and men into ISIL, which works to emphasize or exacerbate feelings of alienation while claiming to provide an alternative.

For many male recruits, ISIL narratives peddling a life of masculine adventure and glory, romance/sex, meaning and belonging, and offering a means to become a “real Islamic man” are salient factors in their joining.

NOTES:

[i]Kimmel, M (2005) ‘Masculinities and Gun Violence: The Personal Meets the Political’, Paper prepared for a session at the UN on “Men, Women and Gun Violence,” 14 July 2005, New York: United Nations

]]>https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/08/24/isil-where-the-real-islamic-men-are/feed/0Elusive peace in South Sudan and the need to change course in the mediationhttps://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/08/21/elusive-peace-in-south-sudan-and-the-need-to-change-course-in-the-mediation/
https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2015/08/21/elusive-peace-in-south-sudan-and-the-need-to-change-course-in-the-mediation/#commentsFri, 21 Aug 2015 13:05:28 +0000https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/?p=3044The conflict in the world’s newest nation, South Sudan, is approaching its second year without resolution. Seven cease fire agreements have been signed and none of them has been implemented. Since its beginning, the conflict has cost the lives of thousands of civilians and displaced nearly one in five of every South Sudanese.

The Inter-Governmental [...]]]>

The conflict in the world’s newest nation, South Sudan, is approaching its second year without resolution. Seven cease fire agreements have been signed and none of them has been implemented. Since its beginning, the conflict has cost the lives of thousands of civilians and displaced nearly one in five of every South Sudanese.

The Inter-Governmental Authority for Development has taken the responsibility to mediate. Ambassador Seyoum Mesfin, a long serving foreign minister of Ethiopia and currently an Ambassador of Ethiopia to the People’s Republic of China is assigned as the chief mediator. Several initiatives were launched to help the South Sudanese conflicting parties move towards peace but none of them have showed any tangible results. This suggests the need to understand the problems within the process.

Parallel and contending processes?

The IGAD process was launched by the foreign ministers of the IGAD states (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, and Eritrea, although Eritrea’s membership is currently suspended) at the outset of the conflict in December 2013, with the backing of the United States, United Nations and African Union. At the beginning its objective was to restore the political status quo prior to the outbreak of the civil war.

In parallel, the Arusha peace process and the ANC/EPRDF jointly launched a forum to help the SPLM address its internal problems and address the conflict problems from a reunified SPLM. All the parties engaged in the mediation publicly insist that these processes are not parallel to the official process and their objectives are tied to enhance the quality of the IGAD led mediation. But this is questionable, as the two processes frame the problem and the ways of addressing it differently.

The Arusha process frames the conflict as an internal SPLM issue and something that could be addressed once the relationships within the SPLM are straightened. Whereas IGAD addresses the conflicting parties as independent of each other, and the solution within ‘agreed sharing of power and wealth and placing appropriate security arrangement’. These varying approaches to the conflict have also produced varying results. The Arusha process, with the objective of mending SPLM internal divisions, reinstated Pagan Amum as secretary general of SPLM, while the IGAD peace process made him sign the latest August 17 accord as a representative of the Group of 13, former officials that were under the custody of President Salva Kiir. It appears the parties are shopping for conferences and processes, and are picking one anytime they see some benefit to it. This highlights the need for a strategic coordination of all efforts and the leadership capacity of the mediation to come up with such a strategy and implement it.

What the IGAD and Arusha and party processes have in common is that they deal with the South Sudanese political-military elites. They have not engaged with the broader South Sudanese populace. The mediators have rarely travelled to South Sudan, and on those few occasions, they have not ventured beyond Juba or the headquarters of the SPLA-IO.

A mediation that doesn’t have undivided political support from its political sponsors

Mediators could be communicators, formulators, and manipulators depending on the obstacles that impede direct negotiations between the conflicting parties. Mediators require undivided political support from their political sponsors, without which they turn into individual actors who solely depend on the goodwill of the conflicting parties. The political support for the IGAD mediation is supposed to come from its sponsoring governments, meaning the governments of IGAD member states.

However, it appears that there isn’t a unified interest among and between the governments of the IGAD member states. Uganda is perceived as a party to the conflict because it has sent its troops to protect the government of South Sudan and its troops are aligned to South Sudanese armed forces in their fight against the SPLM/IO. Sudan is allegedly providing logistics, weapons and bases to Mr Machar’s army. The Kenyans have commercial interests in South Sudan. Ethiopia is particularly interested in peace as its absence affects the stability of the Western Ethiopian regional states with fragile peace. There is no way for the mediation to get an undivided political support from its political sponsors when their interests are in conflict to one another and this is a complicating factor to the mediation process.

One can see, for example, the complication this creates in the process of the most recent peace mediation proposal tabled to the conflicting parties. The IGAD mediation presented a proposal to the parties and asked them to consult with their constituencies and come to Addis for 10 days direct negotiations, with a deadline to sign it on August 17, 2015. The proposal included legislative and executive power sharing both at federal and state level, among other things. The Heads of States and Governments of the IGAD member states in the middle of this process called a summit related to the upcoming negotiations on South Sudan and came with what the belligerents call the ‘Kampala Accord’ which allegedly revised the already tabled peace proposal, scrapping the state level executive and legislative power sharing part of the agreement. When the representatives of the conflicting parties came for the final negotiation they received a revised proposal. Salva Kiir’s chief negotiator complained that it did not reflect the spirit and agreements of the Kampala Accord, and the SPLM/IO argued that it reneged on previous proposal and confused the process.

My intention here is not to recount the details of the ups and downs of the mediation, but to indicate the type of problems mediation faces when the interests of its political sponsors are divided.

This brings me to question on whether continuing the process under the IGAD mediation is to the benefit of peace. The mediators themselves are proving to be parties to the conflict, and unable to act in a consistent and impartial manner. These problems will be multiplied because implementing an agreement is a much more complicated task when compared to signing it.

This blog is part of a series on gender and ISIL. For a full discussion see Van Leuven, Dallin, Dyan Mazurana and Rachel Gordon (forthcoming), “Analysing Foreign Females and Males in the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL) through a Gender Perspective,” Foreign Fighters under International Law and Beyond, edited by Andrea de Guttry, Francesca Capone and Christopher Paulussen, ASSER/Springer Verlag.

In June 2015, three sisters living in Bradford, England took their nine children – ranging in age from 15 years old to three years old – into Syria to join their brother who is fighting for ISIL. Given that ISIL forcibly recruits boys as young as 15 and sends them into combat,[i] it is conceivable that two of the sisters’ boys (ages 13 and 15) are already being trained to fight or are fighting. And given ISIL’s statements on “marriage,” which can “legitimately” begin for girls as young as age nine, but ideally should be completed by age 16,[ii] the little girls may soon be prepared to become ISIL brides. These sisters are not an isolated case of women volunteering to join the group. There are also multiple instances of school-girls in the US, UK and France leaving their homes, joining ISIL and marrying ISIL fighters within days of their arrival (see here and here).[iii]

Why would these girls and women, some of whom bring their own young children, decide to journey to one of the world’s most dangerous warzones under the control of a violent insurgent group? Of course, not all women and girls under ISIL control have had any choice whatsoever in their circumstances, perhaps the most dramatic and well-documented examples stem from ISIL’s treatment of Yazidi women, who have been sold as sex slaves, as discussed below. But for the growing group of older girls and women who have responded to ISIL recruitment efforts, a range of promises draw them towards the group.

The recruitment happens because ISIL needs older girls and women as a human resource in supporting its operations in Syria and Iraq, forming the basis of a new society, and as wives for the young, often unmarried men who join ISIL. The group has actively sought to engage women in jihad. Abu Ahmad, an ISIL official in the group’s self-declared capital city of Raqqa, stated that, “Jihad is not a man-only duty. Women must do their part as well.”[iv] As Dr. Bloom reports, “The women are used as a reward… By marrying [the women] off and encouraging children immediately, [ISIL] retains the men and makes it less likely that they will go back to their home countries.”[v] ISIL female recruits boast online that they are paid extra money for every child they produce.[vi] In fact, women and girls interested to join ISIL, but who are reluctant to marry ISIL fighters, are dissuaded by ISIL from coming.[vii]

How does ISIL draw these girls and women to its cause? There appear to be some important differences in the way ISIL recruits females from European and North American countries, as opposed to those from Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia While much media coverage focuses on the role of social media in recruitment, the internet is the leading factor in the radicalization of females in only a limited number of cases, especially when it comes to Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries. In these instances, personal relationships play a larger role, especially where structured recruitment programs are in place. For example, recruitment cells for females in Central Asia are often small, secretive extensions of female prayer groups.[viii] Women and girls from the Middle East and Central Asian countries, as well as places like Indonesia, are recruited by emphasizing gender roles that align closely with ISIL’s (all female) al-Khanssaa Brigade’s conception of a woman’s sedentary life.[ix] Alternatively, Western recruiters or Syria-based fighters employ the more masculinized themes of “adventure and excitement” to attract girls to ISIL.[x] Older girls and young women are also lured with promises of romance and marriage to ISIL fighters.

ISIL women and girls also actively recruit other females in the name of “sisterhood,” promising real and loving friendships. “On the social media accounts, these women shower each other with love and affection. They treat each other as actual sisters and best friends, which could bring in any woman who longs for friendships.”[xi] However, promises are rarely the reality for foreign female recruits, particularly those from Western countries.[xii]

Yet another promise to the women and girls who would willingly join ISIL is a relatively secure and comfortable life once they arrive in ISIL territories. Recruitment materials and testimony on social media from women and girls who have joined describe receiving rent- and bill-free housing, food and monetary allowances.[xiii] They also receive spoils of war; according to celebratory posts on social media, they receive new clothing and appliances looted from the homes of “the Kuffar [non-believers] and handed to you personally by Allah as a gift.”[xiv]

Interestingly, ISIL also recruits Muslim girls and women to relocate to an active warzone by promising safety. Describing “vulnerable females” within their home countries, recruiters emphasize gendered threats of rape and unwanted sexual attention. An Arabic-language manifesto, purportedly circulated by the al-Khanssaa Brigade, decries the sexual violence supposedly perpetrated against Sunni girls and women by the Iraqi and Saudi regimes.[xv] It goes on to claim that ISIL fighters liberated hundreds of Sunni female prisoners who had been tortured in Iraq, and that such crimes do not exist in the so-called Islamic State.

Escaping conditions of discrimination and abuse is another strong theme of recruitment tactics. Ironically, ISIL’s radical ideology can empower some girls and women to take charge of their current unsatisfactory marital and familial relationships. One of four Kyrgyz women preparing to take their children to Syria without their husbands told an interviewer that their husbands were “against religion, against Islam. My friends do not want to live with them anymore.”[xvi] They deemed ISIL-controlled Syria a better (that is, holier) place to raise their children. Similarly, the three sisters from Bradford, UK, were motivated by the close ties to their ISIL brother and their express dislike of UK society.[xvii]

Idealized traditional marriage and motherhood, adventure, friendship, lifestyle stability, safety, and various forms of escape are mobilized to attract girls and women to ISIL’s cause. Whether these utopian promises are realized in the “caliphate” is another matter altogether. Notably, the al-Khanssaa manifesto portrays an idealized version of (married) women’s lives filled with security, study, child-rearing, and general caretaking. These are described as “sedentary” activities by the writers of the manifesto, although that is probably an inaccurate adjective to describe the numerous and arduous daily requirements of child-rearing, cooking, household management, and other domestic responsibilities, particularly in conflict zones and communities that are often lacking consistent access to electricity, water and other basic services.[xix] In contrast to the comfortable and celebratory descriptions of life in ISIL-controlled territory conveyed by some foreign recruits, media reports describe crumbling infrastructure, skyrocketing prices, and a lack of food and basic necessities; smuggled videos show women and children reaching out desperately for distributions of bread in Syrian and Iraqi towns.[xx]

Finally, many of ISIL’s female “members” are anything but willing participants in its activities.

Of course, there is a distinction between active members of the group and the many thousands who live in territory that has come under ISIL control. The line between the two categories is blurred, however, particularly when it comes to girls and women who are swept up in territorial takeovers and forced into slavery, sexual enslavement, forced marriage and domestic service to jihadist fighters. Some of these are foreign girls and women forced into ISIL when they are captured in Iraq and sold and trafficked into Syria for ISIL, or vice versa.

Clearly, ISIL hopes to anchor its fighters and the caliphate by using older girls and women, even if these relationships have to be forged through deception, force and violence. The Islamic State requires girls and women to behave in certain ways, in part to build the caliphate and in part to ensure that men and boys behave the way ISIL needs.

[i] United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (2014) Report on the Protection of Civilians in the Armed Conflict in Iraq: 6 July to 10 September 2014. United Nations Publication, Baghdad, Iraq, p 18.